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and wall coverings; striped outdoor umbrellas with a Slim
Aarons flavor; and Moroccan sinks procured by Poppy during
her honeymoon in Marrakech.
“Poppy has more of an eye than I do. She has impeccable
taste, so I let her take the lead on the decor,” Cara says,
deferring to her older sister. Poppy sees the division of labor
in a different light: “Basically, I’m a control freak. We each
made our imprint on the design, but I was the one obsessing
over the color of the curtain rings.” For his part, Bini credits
both of the Delevingnes for their vision and enthusiasm.
“They were great editors, and they were game for anything.
The sentences that started with ‘This is the craziest idea
you’ve heard... ,’ those were the things we built first,” he
notes. As a case in point, he mentions the massive bunk bed
in the guest room, a metal-framed structure clad in bamboo,
supporting two stacked queen mattresses. “That was Cara’s
idea, and it was brilliant,” Poppy enthuses.
The sisters’ divergent personal tastes come into high relief
in the design of their individual bedroom suites. The center-
piece of Poppy’s dreamy, light-filled aerie is a wall covered in
a hand-painted de Gournay paper featuring monkeys and
toucans cavorting in trees and vines against a field of Tiffany
blue. “I fell in love with de Gournay as a teenager. I have a
similar paper in the bathroom of my house in London [AD,
November 2017]. It’s a running theme,” she explains. “For my
bedroom here, I wanted to create a calming atmosphere, with
pale pinks and blues, Moroccan rugs, and supersoft fabrics.
It feels like heaven.”
In contrast, Cara’s bedroom, on the lower level of the two-
story house, is a much moodier affair, reminiscent of a proper
gentleman’s club, albeit one with serious sex appeal. Among its
eccentricities is a sprawling bed, 11 feet wide, set on a mirrored
platform—perfect for communal sleepovers and pajama parties.
“The room feels like the Playboy Mansion with a touch of Art
Deco and a David Hicks pattern thrown in for good measure,”
Cara says of the heady vibe. “I wanted to reclaim the concept
of the bachelor pad and make it my own.”
Of course, for maximum men’s-club realness, there’s
the soundproof party bunker that opens off Cara’s bedroom,
replete with such louche details as carpeted walls, a mirrored
ceiling, a stripper pole, disco lighting, and an assortment of
black velvet paintings of bare-breasted women—just the right
amount of wrong. Cara justifies the provocative private lair
by citing no less an authority than the hip-hop artist Nelly:
“Like he said, it’s important to have a friend with a pole in
the basement.”