Poppy Lissiman
Harro Kennedy
Which of your senses do you feel are the most sharpened?
Harro: I’m one of those people who obsess over Spotify playlists. It is an endless joy listening to ‘Cooking Music’ (think Vicky Cristina Barcelona soundtrack) or ‘Positive Energy’ (ie: Hang Together by Odyssey) or ‘Exotic Weird Disco’ (like Stop Bajon by Tullio De Piscopo). I even throw in a few nature sounds of birds chirping and monkeys in a rainforest hooting. I may be biased, but I’ve got the greatest taste in music in the world.
Poppy: Smell. I love fragrances and how they make you feel and set the tone for the day or night ahead. I light a different incense every morning when I wake up, and will mix a few different body fragrances depending on my mood. Yesterday I needed a bit of pep in my step—I went with Matcha 26 from Le Labo, combined with a bit of Black Citrus from Vilhelm Parfumerie. When I'm lounging on a Sunday, I’ll go for something spicy, floral and mysterious like Portrait of a Lady from Frédéric Malle.
What smells like home?
We’re obsessed with fragrances, so I feel like our home smell is constantly an evolving mish mash of incense, room sprays, candles and body fragrance that we happen to be vibing on at the time. One day it could be a spice market in Marrakesh, or a citrus orchard on a farm, or a log cabin in the mountains, or an exotic flower garden.
Invest in things
that connect you
to the ground.
POWDER ROOM
Our Powder Room (the tiny bathroom under the stairs) was inspired by Andrée Putmen’s design for Morgans Hotel in New York. Black and white chequered tiles cover the walls and floor, which feels like an optical illusion. We always try to have nice candles and flowers in there. It’s a bathroom you don’t want to leave.
SCONES
There are two types of people in the world: Those that care about lighting, and the savages who think fluorescent hospital lighting is okay. What sort of person buys cool lights, instead of warm? Anyway. We got dimmers installed in our house with these amazing led strip lights that line the kitchen and the dining room, that line the perimeter of both rooms. We turn off all the lights, set those strip lights to the lowest setting and light a few candles. It feels like you're in a cool bar. Poppy’s a purist and only likes real candles, but I’ve been getting a lot of joy from cheap battery powered candles—they’re not bad!
Speaking of lighting—we have these scones in our bathroom that give off a golden hour sunset glow, which bounces off the peach colour of the bathroom walls. Makes you look tanned and 10 times more beautiful, easily—and often that’s all you need to put a pep in your step. There’s bathroom lighting, and then there’s bathroom lighting.
VINES
The sense of achievement you get from gardening is addictive. For a few years I was deep into growing basil (think: A/B tests, 16 pots to track different techniques and growth rate), and I’m now into growing vines and creepers up the walls of the house. The idea is to one day have it completely covered, like a big green box. Have you heard about Virginia Creeper? It’s insane—one of the fastest growing creepers in the world. I’ve clocked it growing 22-28cm per week. It’s rocketed about 3.5m high in the past three months. You can basically watch it grow in realtime. I start each morning in the garden in my bathrobe lovingly touching the leaves, guiding it to different parts of the wall, checking for bugs, watering it, etc. I am utterly obsessed.
BANQUETTE
We’ve got this custom banquette (an upholstered bench along a wall) in our dining room. My mum is an architect who has spent 30 years perfecting this banquette design down to: the exact angle of the backrest, how high the pillow should be against your lower back, cushion thickness, and the exact firmness when you sit on it (softer outer layer, but firmer inner layer). When people come to our house and sit in it, they let out a deep sigh, sink into it and say something like, “I could sit here spanking wines for hours and hours.” And we do! It’s got room for 18 people to sit, which is all the more luxurious when there’s only two people and a cute small dog.
WOMB ROOM
Do you have a nickname for your living room? We do. We call it the ‘Womb Room.’ There’s peach coloured couches, and a sort of red ochre soft carpet, with thick wooden beams on the ceiling that were recycled from a historic building in our neighbourhood and a little fireplace.
We often find that we lounge on the carpet rather than the couches. Being in the room feels like a warm hug. Poppy likes to spend Sunday afternoons lounging on the couch, listening to the soothing sounds of podcasts about horrific murders and true-crime.
