Look inside Charlotte Dellal’s maximalist North Kensington home

It’s a wet Wednesday afternoon when I visit the North Kensington family home of Charlotte Dellal, the Charlotte Olympia shoe designer.

It has been just four months since her fourth son, Guy, was born (joining Ray, nine; Ike, six; and Rio, four), but today it’s surprisingly quiet — aside from a pug-zu and Rhodesian ridgeback that nose in and out of proceedings. ‘This is our first family home,’ she explains, lips painted MAC’s Ruby Woo red and hair set in her signature pin curls, as we tour her four-storey Georgian house. ‘We moved in with two kids knowing that I was hopefully having more — which I did,’ she smiles, herself one of four. ‘Now if I want to have another child I’ll have to give up my dressing room.’

Located on the first floor and housing some 150 pairs of shoes alone, Dellal’s leopard print-clad boudoir is as good a place to start as any. ‘My favourites are actually out because it’s our 10-year anniversary this year so we have rereleased many,’ she says of the surrealist lobster sandals and minibar clutch displayed on custom shelving, which have won her fans in Kate Moss, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga over the years. Dellal, now 36, started the brand (which utilises her middle name) from her kitchen table when she was pregnant with Ray.

‘My house is quite eclectic but I think when it’s a family home it’s got to marry everything together,’ she says, alluding to her Anglo-Brazilian heritage and the Anglo-Iranian background of her husband, the private equity investor Maxim Crewe, 37. A neon installation that spells out ‘What would Prince Charles wear?’ lines the upstairs hallway. It was a gift from Dellal to Crewe, who is apparently as serious about his threads as she is about her shoes.

There is a warming, sentimental nostalgia about this home — from old teddy bears that have been framed (‘I think it’s sad to put them in storage’) to a vintage Versace number from the Eighties that once belonged to her mother, the Brazilian model Andrea Dellal. ‘I don’t want to put things in cupboards so I make my own piece of art,’ she says. ‘That said, it is now on the Versace runway again so I kinda want to wear it.’

Downstairs the lounge is teeming with treasures, from framed copies of the legendary editor Diana Vreeland’s ‘Why Don’t you?’ advice columns for Harper’s Bazaar to a kitsch Rio de Janeiro doll collection, spider ornaments (referencing her logo) and a ceramic leopard (acquired from Crewe’s grandmother), which watches over her cocktail bar. ‘This is Bruce my mascot,’ she says, adding that she loves a Negroni or Whisky Sour. ‘I like a proper cocktail — it’s that sense of ritual.’

Moving past her silver coffee table by Mattia Bonetti, a serious design piece inherited from her parents (her father is the property tycoon Guy Dellal), she adds: ‘I just love colour, I’m not scared of it.’ Indeed, the carpet upstairs is a bright green while her lounges are contrasting hues of mustard and rose, the living room further enlivened by an entire bookcase of DVDs. ‘My younger brother walked in the other day and was like, “Is this an installation?”’ she laughs. ‘I was like, “No, but that’s very millennial of you.” I’m a kid of the Nineties, you see.’

Dellal has a penchant for photography by Horst, William Klein, Guy Bourdin, Noé Sendas, Alex Prager and Shirin Neshat — works by them line the lounge and entrance hallway in addition to bombshell pin-up girls, salvaged from Portobello Market. ‘It sounds really obvious but I’m drawn to shoes and legs,’ she says looking at a Bourdin photograph mixed in with the couple’s art collection that includes works by Andy Dixon, Paulina Olowska and Lawrence Owen. ‘Someone once told me that you should never buy art just for a particular spot. If you love it you will always find a place for it.’

Unfortunately Rickson the ridgeback took a particular liking to one Dixon painting that is currently being repaired. ‘I’ve learnt with more kids, more dogs and more age that you just have to let go a bit,’ she says. ‘But I would never let it go completely.’ Indeed in her open kitchen she’s not averse to an Ikea sofa, or AstroTurf in the backyard. ‘The only way forward with four boys.’

Pragmatism is abundant under this roof. When I ask where she finds her furnishings, she says: ‘I’m a straight googler.’ Well, that combined with a team of skilled tradesmen who help Dellal flesh out her interior vision. ‘I’ve got a great guy on All Saints Road called Shay at Revival who helps me make my own sofas and beds,’ she says. ‘My husband calls him “The other man in my life”. But it’s important to build creative relationships.’ The same could be said for her picture-hanger: ‘Brett Frizelle,’ she enthuses, ‘he’s the other man in my life.’

Which is not to forget her weekly hair appointment with John Hilliard at Hershesons, who sets her hair the old-fashioned way with lotion and pink curlers. ‘I do it for me because it makes me feel like me,’ she says of her routine. ‘My mum and grandmother brought me up like that.’ She has the same conviction when it comes to polished nails and nice underwear. ‘I can’t physically wear miss-matched underwear. I mean I’m married, but you do it for yourself,’ adding that she has a stockpile of now discontinued Agent Provocateur maternity underwear. ’It’s about making yourself feel good. Even my children notice if my nails aren’t red,’ she says of her signature crimson moons. She laughs. ‘I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I have to keep up appearances when I’ve got four boys!”’

From her boxing sessions at Box Clever Sports (‘I like to sweat’) to family dinners at Pizza East Portobello, she’s a west Londoner through and through — indeed, she has lived here since she was 13. ‘I’ve lived in Notting Hill for a lot of my life, I just like being out a bit now,’ she says of her W10 abode that’s closest to Ladbroke Grove Tube station and a stone’s throw from her office, where she employs 30 staff members. ‘Lots of people ask how I make it work as a mother-of-four with a business, and

I think I’m lucky because I work for myself. I can choose that my office is close to my home and kids’ school. It’s still juggling but it allows flexibility. You always feel guilty but as I get older, you don’t beat yourself up about it so much as long as you feel you are doing your best.’

Dellal first met Crewe when she was just 14, so theirs has been a long infatuation. After he proposed in 2009, the designer Giambattista Valli, for whom she had interned while she was studying at Cordwainers, was one of the first people she called. ‘I was like, “Finally you can do it”. She smiles, remembering the day in 2010 that was held at her parent’s country home: ‘I was so relaxed in a way when it came to my wedding ’cause I already had a baby.’