When designer Alison Lloyd bought her flat in 2004 she was four years into running her bag and accessory company, Ally Capellino, which she began after her marriage and clothing brand ended in 1999. Sixteen years later, shes at the helm of a successful handbag and accessories brand, best known for its functional aesthetic and leather and waxed cotton rucksacks.Her home, spread across the bottom two floors of a four-storey Victorian house in Dalston, shares a similarly measured aesthetic, but it is balanced out with what a good dose of what Lloyd refers to as ‘organised clutter’ – from a collection of decorated eggs to a neatly arranged line of postcards. Here, she talks to us about her love of salvage and the joy to be derived from creating a garden with not a slice of lawn in sight. Alison: “After I split up with my husband in 2000, I put all the money I had down on a mortgage for a flat in Mile End where I lived with my then teenage son, Hamish. It didn’t have a garden, but it was on the canal and surrounded by a park and playing fields. “I sold the flat after a couple of years, and amazingly doubled my money on it. It’s the most money I’ve made in my life. We rented and moved around a fair bit, while I hunted for somewhere with a good garden. “I spent ages and ages looking, and eventually saw this place near Hackney Downs with its high ceilings and big garden. I was the first person to see it and offered the full amount, but then the owners started to dither as they thought they could get more for it. I ended up bribing them with handbags.

“It’s an upside down flat, with the bedrooms downstairs in the basement and the kitchen and sitting room upstairs on the ground floor. I lived here for a little while and started to make a few changes when I could afford to. “Downstairs, I carved some space out of the two enormous bedrooms to create a bathroom for each of them, and then turned what had been the bathroom, just off the stairs, into a third small bedroom. My housemate, an artist, has been living in that room for almost a year. “I decided to swap the concrete floor in the basement for reclaimed pine boards that had apparently come from the British Museum. It is brilliantly laid, with the boards butted up closely to one another. I’ve left them as I bought them, but I’m thinking about perhaps painting them. On the ground floor, I’ve painted the original floorboards black – it’s reflective rather than oppressive as the ceilings are so high up there. “In the kitchen, I moved the existing cooker and sink and added a set of double doors and a balcony, with steps down to the garden. The kitchen table is the two-and-a-half-metre-long counter from the shop we used to have in Soho. I love cooking big dinners, but I’m quite spur of the moment when it comes to organising things. That table is one of my favourite places to sit. “I spend most of my time at home in the garden, although I find it impossible to just sit down. It’s big, but I ended up buying half of next doors garden after a bit of negotiation. I tried to have a lawn, but it just didn’t work and became a mud bath.

“The idea to add two ponds – one square, one long and rectangular – came after visiting a garden around the corner from here as part of the Open Garden scheme about six years ago. They had a little square pond, surrounded by a box hedge, and it was full of newts and fish. I thought, “I want that”. A brilliant guy helped me create the ponds and we used roofing tiles on their ends to create a gorgeous textural surround for the ponds. “The raised bed is for fruit and vegetables, and it’s been particularly successful for blackberries, raspberries and rocket this year. I put in loads of artichokes to create some structure and they’re almost 12 feet high. It’s been quite hard to keep up with the beans this summer. “I can’t help but keep adding things in – I’m very naughty and am always bringing plants back from holidays. I once brought an olive tree back from Greece because I felt sorry for it. I take great pleasure in the challenge of bringing things back to life again. I found an abandoned fiddle leaf fig tree on the street the other day and that ended up coming home with me too. “I had a large shed built in the garden about four years ago. It’s good for yoga, but also just for sitting around in and recently my housemate has been using it to make his collages in. It leads through to the extra part of the garden, which feels like quite a lovely surprise. I have a big illuminated McDonald’s sign in the garden, which a friend who works in salvage found for me. I don’t know why I have it really; I like yellow.

“I’m a great collector of worthless crap, but I’m quite organised about it. A friend of mine had somebody declutter her house and she showed him pictures of my house. He said, “That isn’t clutter. It’s organised”. So, I believe it’s organised clutter. I’ve amassed a collection of decorated eggs: there’s some I painted years ago at Easter with Hamish and my daughter, Agnes, and also some beautifully painted ones from Romania. “I’ve increasingly got into colour and have a lot of paintings. My ex-husband’s dad was a painter and I have three or four of his. The portrait of Hamish and me in the kitchen was a present for my thirtieth from the artist Theo Platt. “I also like collecting postcards and have a line of Duncan MacAskill’s mail art in my bedroom. I remember discovering his work over twenty years ago at Wapping Pumping Station when he had a month-long residency. I’m also working on a little collection of postcards featuring black and white photographs of artists, such as Cindy Sherman and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Apart from the two Ligne Roset sofas, nothing in the flat is of any value. I made the coffee table in the sitting room from a cable wheel that I found in the bushes in Mile End Park. It’s been balanced on that old orange box for the last sixteen years.

“The kitchen chairs all cost a fiver from a market. I take great pleasure out of things like that. I found the two big cupboards in the kitchen on Roman Road in Bow and they both had to be sawed in half to get them into the flat. I had one painted in white gloss paint. It’s a finish I love and I’m tempted to paint the bedroom ceilings in white gloss too. “My son went to university soon after we moved into the flat, but in 2007 Agnes who had been living with her dad, arrived on the doorstep with all of her possessions. She stayed for five years and it was such a special time. “When she left to live with her boyfriend (now husband) I rattled around a bit on my own and decided to rent out one of the bedrooms on Airbnb. I don’t really do it for money, but I’m interested in people. I have a rule that it has to be only one person staying, and I’ve made some great friends through it. One lady emailed from India the other day. Over lockdown, I’ve been using that bedroom as an office. “Usually, I work from a studio in Clerkenwell and it’s quite a nice cycle in. Because of cycling, I’m a rucksack person, so I am often carrying one of my samples. At the beginning of the year, I sold Ally Capellino into a small group called Authentic Bespoke, and become the Creative Director.

“We’ve just redecorated our shop on Calvert Avenue in Shoreditch and painted the exterior woodwork brown, which is more-or-less the colour of the brickwork in the area. Architect Seng Watson helped us and has done these gorgeous cast concrete benches for the front. “In a way, my flat isn’t really decorated at all. The walls are mainly just white, and it’s the space, light and high ceilings are what make it work. I move smaller pieces around, but the sofas always stay put. They are more-or-less in the right place I think. The green sofa is where I sit to watch television and I sometimes have to warn my Airbnb guests of becoming too familiar with it. “I have an urge to add an extension onto the back of the house. I haven’t even spoken to the neighbours yet, but it would be quite modern, with green glazed bricks and space for an extra bedroom and bathroom. That way, the small third bedroom on the stairs could become a bathroom again and you wouldn’t have to always go to the basement for the loo. My 90-year-old mother hates having to trek downstairs.” Alison, how do you define modern living? “What is modern? None of us have Sunday dinner anymore. I even had a salad for breakfast. That’s quite modern, I guess.” Is there a home for sale on our website that has caught your eye? “South Lodge Drive in Oakwood, which was built in the Sixties. It reminds me of my junior school, has a big garden that hasn’t had its potential realised and my son has a thing for bungalows. I think he likes the word.

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