Give in to flower power

6:59am Saturday 28th June 2008

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WALKING into Kim Parker’s home is like entering a garden, with a profusion of flowers and plants apparently blooming in every corner and on every surface.

It’s a peaceful, calm sanctuary where you can almost smell the roses – but that turns out to be a heady illusion. These blooms aren’t in vases but on the designer’s signature prints which feature on wall canvases, fabrics for her sofas, cushions and rugs.

Lush, decorative and homely – it’s enough to make a minimalist flee in horror.

But Kim is unrepentant about her addiction to colour and flowers and it’s earned her a legion of fans.

They love her rugs, sold by the Rug Company – one features in Carrie Bradshaw’s room in the Sex And The City film. Not forgetting her china for Spode and her wall prints.

Kim, 45, is chatting about her new book, Kim Parker Home as she sits in her welcoming lounge.

She smiles as she says: “Call me an anti-minimalist. I believe in celebrating the feminine and nature and I’m all for abundance.

“Frankly, I would be unhappy in those trend-conscious bland rooms where everything’s decorated in safe neutrals. For me colour’s like a vitamin, or even a drug.”

That’s apparent in the atmosphere the moment you enter her 19th century brownstone apartment in downtown Manhattan in New York.

Her exuberant designs in succulent colours – some inspired by the designs of William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh – are a world away from traditional pin-point-accurate botanical prints.

Despite her love of the the past – reflected in rooms which feature antique cabinets overflowing with her own ceramic ranges for Spode and her collections of English china – her own style isn't old fashioned.

Its freshness means it sits as easily in a contemporary setting as well as a period one and although her designs are predominantly floral, she does include abstract and geometric patterns in her ranges.

She says: “Someone once told me that it was lucky I was never traditionally trained in art because it would have destroyed my lyrical style.”

Kim Parker Home, by Kim Parker, is published by Stewart Tabori & Chang, priced £14.99.