Kit Kemp's Barbados

I'm pretty sure you know of Kit Kemp's work. She operates, together with her husband, Firmdale Hotels, in London and New York. They are a bunch of boutique hotels that have been decorated with vivid colour and patterns and every inch of the hotel rooms, designed by Kemp, including the furniture, upholstery, drapery and art, is suffused with ethnic imagery and graphics. The room above is one of my favourites and once you have seen one of her rooms you are able to identify her signature style going forward.

 

So when I was browsing through Vogue Living I saw a home in Barbados that clearly had to belong to Kemp.

 

 

 

Kemp and her husband recently did a re-do of the property they've had in Barbados for the past decade.

 

 

 

Kemp brought her love for colour and splashes of graphic geometry and mingled it with walls made from the island's limestone.

 

 

 

In a way, the property's architecture is typical of what you would see in hotels like Sandy Lane or even places where locals live, like Millenium Heights. But Kemp brought to her property her interior design savvy. Like, look at this ceiling below. Normally a home like this in St. James, Barbados, would have the same ceiling, except the clapboards would be painted a sandy cream or white. But look at Kemp's design eye on display. BAM! A burgundy ceiling. BOOM! A turquoise ceiling. Not genius but definitely extraordinary.

 

 

 

From what I can tell this is no ordinary house designed for tourists. It looks --well, what shall I say-- it looks illustrious and yet homey.

 

 

All Images via Vogue Living

 

Still, in all of this, having lived in Barbados for four years, I still do get depressed when I think about the number of expat-owned properties on the island. This is only because the locals can hardly afford to buy property in their homeland because the foreigners have driven up the cost of real estate on the island. The investment is needed but the price is high to the Bajans.