Inside the colourful world of Solange Azagury-Partridge

Since founding her eponymous jewellery brand in 1995, when she opened her first boutique on London’s Westbourne Grove, Solange Azagury-Partridge has been in the business of creating fantasy worlds. Her 35-year career is celebrated in Solange: Jewellery for Chromantics (2024, Rizzoli), while her playful, punk ‘Hotlips’ rings are in the V&A’s permanent collection, along with other examples of her work; it's not surprise that her homes have the same irreverent glamour layers of pattern and colour enlivened small, plain rooms.

Solange Azagury-Partridge in one of her shops, standing against a wall washed in her bespoke ‘Solange Pink’ paint, created with Papers and Paints

In contrast, her London flat, which she has shared with her family for 30 years, has ‘wonderful bones and beautiful features’, its grand proportions calling for ‘enormous’ pieces of furniture. Her goal for the interiors has always been simple: ‘I need to walk through the door and feel cocooned and cherished by my family and my stuff.’ To that end, each space is washed in one colour, making a cohesive backdrop for an ever-changing collection of special objects, some designed by Solange, others swapped with artist friends for her jewellery. ‘I’m always happy to barter – it’s a lovely thing to do,’ she says.

The chinoiserie-style wallpaper is from Watts 1874, while the tufted rug by Alexandra Kehayoglou and the nude painting were both bartered for jewellery. The neon design in the fireplace was made by Solange

Over the years, every room has had a different incarnation. ‘The kitchen has been a bedroom, one of the bedrooms has been a kitchen, one sitting room was a bedroom… It’s been like moving home, as the kids have grown up and as our finances have ebbed and flowed,’ she explains, adding: ‘Sometimes it takes years to work something out; you can’t do things immediately.’

Patterned Moroccan tiles line the walls and the surround of the bathtub, creating a beautifully eclectic patchwork effect

Solange designed the ‘Snake Pit’ rug in the study for ‘Unwearable Jewels’, her 2008 debut US solo show in New York. Whether it’s a ring, a rug or a room, her attention to detail and focus on craft is the same. ‘If you have an eye and a certain sensibility, you can move it around to different disciplines,’ she says. Perhaps that’s why her boutiques have such a welcoming, home-like feel.

In the Hotlips by Solange boutique, a neon piece sits playfully in the fireplace

Describing their interiors as ‘an exaggeration of the look, slightly more amped up’, she moves pieces of furniture between the flat and her shops all the time. Although Solange believes certain colours and patterns belong to work, she admits that ‘maybe it isn’t apparent to anybody else, but to me it feels different’. One decorative detail the spaces do share is a specific shade of pink that appears in her Hotlips by Solange boutique, her headquarters and the bathroom at home.

With a giant red gift bow hanging from the centre, the ceiling in one of Solange’s shops is hand-painted in pink-and-red stripes, like a circus tent

Inspired by ‘an amazing pair of trousers and that Bazooka Joe-bubblegum pink with a slight luminosity’, it was developed with a friend before being mixed up by Papers and Paints. ‘If you go there and ask for “Solange Pink”, that’s what you’ll get,’ she says.

In the headquarters of Solange’s jewellery business, reclaimed wood panelling lines the conference room, with the walls above painted in ‘Solange Pink’ and embellished with leaves by the artist Oscar Burnett

The family usually spends Christmas in London before travelling down to Somerset for the New Year. Apart from a little Christmas tree, the flat doesn’t need much decoration for the holidays; with its sumptuous wine-coloured velvet sofa and gleaming de Gournay wallpaper, the living room feels festive all year round.

That wallpaper originally hung in Solange’s Mayfair boutique before being carefully reinstalled here – look closely and you’ll see some parts are patchworked together. ‘There was a chunk of the big tree missing and Timna Woollard, a great friend who’s an artist, painted it in for me,’ explains Solange.

It’s a perfect example of her approach to interiors: repurposing beautiful things, inviting friends to make their mark and always imagining fresh possibilities. ‘That room was pale blue for many years, and I loved it. Now I love it even more in a different way.

It just keeps evolving.’ solange.co.uk. Solange’s home features in ‘Faded Glamour in the City’ by Pearl Lowe (Cico Books, £25), pearllowe.co.uk