After an idyllic childhood spent picking

apples and helping with the lambing season

(“we all had matted hair and rode horses

bareback through the middle of nowhere”),

Alice left Somerset to study fashion design

at the Royal College of Art and Central St

Martins in London. In 2000, a year after

graduating, she launched her eponymous label

with boyfriend Lars von Bennigsen. Seventeen

years on and Alice, who split from Lars in

2012 and lives with their nine-year-old son,

Fox, sits at the helm of a major international

player in women’s luxury ready-to-wear,

bridal and couture. Temperley London is

one of the three top-selling brands on Moda

Operandi, has five standalone stores (two in

London, and one each in Los Angeles, Dubai

and Doha) and is distributed in more than 30

countries. A hugely successful bridal range

was launched in 2007, and a more affordable

range introduced in partnership with British

retailer John Lewis in 2012, Somerset by Alice

Temperley, became the fastest-selling fashion

collection in the department store’s history.

Alice has succeeded in bottling a precise

sort of feminine, whimsical Britishness

that flies off the shelves, and Somerset is

an integral part of its DNA. This month

she releases her second coffee table book,

English Myths and Legends, in which an

entire chapter is dedicated to the influence

of Somerset, the cider farm and Cricket

Court on the brand’s ethos. “Temperley is

about designing really beautiful dresses but

still having that sensibility of being from the

countryside, so very relaxed, very effortless,”

explains the 42-year-old tastemaker, who

was awarded an MBE in 2011 for services to

fashion. “The Temperley girl will never be

totally ‘done’ from head to foot. If she has

an amazing gown, she will have bare feet. It’s

a tuxedo jacket over a dress, masculine and

feminine, overtly pretty but very undone at

the same time.”

This barefoot bohemian way of life also

inspires the look of Cricket Court, which

can be read as a giant mood board for the

Temperley philosophy and aesthetic. “I don’t

like anything too fiddly and little, nothing

fussy,” she says, gesturing to entrance doors

strewn with oversized disco balls that open

into a stunning double-height tiled entrance

hall under a large painted dome. “It’s similar

to what we do at the brand. I could never live

in a conventional building.”

The estate’s history is anything but

conventional. William the Conqueror gave

it to his brother after the Battle of Hastings

in 1066. The current iteration, built in the

19th century, was once owned by Lord

Beaverbrook, who made it available for secret

meetings between British and American

leaders during the Second World War.

“Churchill planned the D-Day landings from

the library,” Alice remarks casually.

“The house is full of dreamscapes, thanks

to its position and the light within it. The

guy who designed it was enhanced, shall

“I

can’t believe that as a child I didn’t know it was

there,” says the British fashion designer Alice

Temperley of Cricket Court, a heritage-listed

Regency mansion that’s been her country

home since 2010. Set on six hectares in

the quintessentially English rural landscape

of Ilminster, Somerset, the house is just 13

kilometres from the cider farm on which she and her siblings,

Mary, Mathilda and Harry, grew up, and yet Alice spent her

childhood completely unaware of its existence. “Weirdly,

we knew every inch of the moors on the other side of the

house,” she says, “but because it’s quite hilly and undulating,

there are little pockets you just don’t discover.”

FAIRYTALE

PLAYGROUND

Every corner

of the historic

house brims

with whimsical

touches

reflecting the

Temperley

philosophy

and aesthetic,

from antique

headpieces and

flag-covered

walls to double-

size windows

and a fabulous

disco bath that

stands on a

Union Jack rug

in the en-suite

198 hong kong tatler. september 2017