Interior designer Kelly Hoppen on being part of Dubai's design evolution

After a villa project in the Tilal Al Ghaf community, Hoppen is considering putting down roots in the region with more collaborations and a local studio

Interior designer Kelly Hoppen says she would love to design a boutique hotel in the UAE. Photo: Kelly Hoppen

Kelly Hoppen is on a mission – to change people's perception of the Middle East. “I think many still get it wrong,” she tells me.

The South African-British interior designer is in Dubai for a few days to speak at the Women in Leadership talk as part of Downtown Design. She also has a gruelling schedule of meetings with various developers, yet is still full of energy.

With a career spanning more than four decades, Hoppen has a widely influential style, something that is not lost on her as we meet in a gleaming Downtown Dubai hotel decked out with chic objets d'art and the cool tones that she helped make popular. Her style has been copied many times; if your home or Pinterest board is filled with calming neutrals mixed with singular, exotic pieces, you probably have her to thank.

A project at Lanai Island villas at the soon-to-open Tilal Al Ghaf development in Dubai brought Hoppen back to the region two years ago. Having not visited for a few years, she was struck then by how much the city had evolved in her absence. “I didn't know what to expect, but I remember coming back to the studio [in London] and I was buzzing. I said: 'It's so different, it's got an energy that I hadn't expected.'”

The Tilal Al Ghaf project offered something different, too. Asked to create the interiors for the high-end villas being built on the man-made islands in the heart of the new community, Hoppen was impressed with the philosophy behind the project.

“It was more forward-thinking, about sustainability, about creating smaller, not always larger, about experiences. It was about all of those things that I'm so passionate about and have worked with all over the world. So I went back [to England] and was bouncing off the walls, telling everyone about it.”

Kelly Hoppen was brought in to create the interiors of the Lanai Island villas at Tilal Al Ghaf. Photo: Kelly Hoppen

For the project by Majid Al Futtaim, Hoppen was invited to infuse the villas with her signature aesthetic. The result is an elegant yet relaxed atmosphere, where chic meets comfort. Picture swirled marble in grey and gold on walls, countertops and grand dining tables, paired with textured furniture and rugs in soothing shades of oatmeal, buttermilk and cloud grey.

Natural wood accents feature in room screens and wall cladding, while pale oak flooring softens the abundant light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Roomy sofas are given an edge with leopard-print cushions. Points of interest arrive as pops of colour, including cushions in terracotta, a chaise-longue in forest green velvet and low-slung chairs in sunny primrose yellow.

“The light plays a huge part,” explains Hoppen. “I used a bit more colour than normal, but it works very well – the light here is very intense.”

Every country has its own DNA, and I love to tap into that

Kelly Hoppen,
interior designer

Rather than working to a set brief, she explains how the interiors arose from a working relationship built on trust. “They really did give us a free hand to design what we wanted. I got it the minute I came here and I walked around. That was amazing for me to see that for the first time. It's a sort of oasis.”

Her studio is already working on other projects in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and beyond. “We are working on a couple of projects with Emaar in Abu Dhabi and, slowly but surely, are now working on quite a lot of projects here, and also in Riyadh.”

Things are going so well, she says she might consider opening an outpost of her design studio in the region. “We will still do all of the design out of the UK, but we want to have feet on the ground here because it's very fast. ”

Hoppen says the intense light was a big influence on her designs for the Dubai villas. Photo: Kelly Hoppen

The long-term aim would be to create a studio to train the next generation of regional talent. “I want to open a studio where we could gather designers in this country, to really teach them what I've known and learnt. To have great foundations and designers here, under the umbrella of Kelly Hoppen Interiors, rather than all of the great companies in Dubai who are constantly taking designers from other countries.

“I think the opportunities here for craftsmanship, using local people to create things – it's just interesting,” she adds.

Yet another ongoing regional collaboration is with Marina Home, the local distributor for Kelly Hoppen Interiors homeware. “I met the Marina Home team in Paris,” she says. “I was showing my furniture collection at [trade fair] Maison&Objet Paris, and they came and bought it and sold it in the Middle East.

“When I came up with this new collection a few years ago, they asked: 'Who do you want to partner with?', and I said Marina Home. They're fantastic. I'm a bit old-fashioned like that. I'm very loyal to the people I've worked with.”

Furniture by Kelly Hoppen Interiors is available at Marina Home in the UAE. Photo: Kelly Hoppen

It is not an exaggeration to credit Hoppen with helping kick-start the East-meets-West interior trend in the UK. Her sublime taste has inspired interiors all over the world, including creating a tea room in China and a fluted bathtub she calls the “cupcake”. Always curious to learn more, Hoppen has a deft way of mixing things together that feels light, spontaneous and beautifully simple, while remaining chic and sophisticated.

“Every country has its own DNA, and I love to tap into that and understand what it is that makes a country so special,” she says. “I think good design is about walking into a space and not quite understanding what it is that you love. But it is the combination of cultures. Dubai is such a diverse country with so many nationalities that I think people want to love the city for what it is, but they also want individuality in terms of design.”

After 45 years in the design world, Hoppen is still hungry for the next challenge. “I have a dream of what I want to do here. I would love to be involved in what I call a boutique hotel. I want to manifest it. And I'm not talking like 20 rooms. It could be 50, even 150 rooms, but bring that essence of a Paris, Milan, Barcelona, London, New York kind of vibe to a hotel here. That is what I'd really love to do.”

It's apparent that she is not only at the top of her game, but also still feeling inspired. “It's what challenges me and makes me still bounce out of bed and want to do this. So it's not just coming here and meeting people and doing a job, it's thinking how can we really push the boundaries to do something special?”

Marble, natural wood, neutral shades and pops of colour combine in the villa interiors. Photo: Kelly Hoppen

Hoppen understands the shift in how people want to live in a post-pandemic world. “Thirty years ago, if you said to me: 'Would you ever live in a place that had lots of villas?', I'd say: 'No, I don't want to talk to my neighbours.' But the world is changing. So I think what they're doing here with these wonderful places, with pools and beaches, is about family. It's about community. It's about your life for the next 20 years.”

This transition to community-style living within a city is years ahead of anything on offer in Europe, where people have to flee to the countryside for something similar, she believes.

“When I came here again, I was beautifully surprised how it had changed. It was evolving with the rest of the world, rather than being just high-rises and glitz. There is something special growing here.”