My French fancy!

It’s really nothing from the outside, like a child’s drawing of a house with a door and windows on either side. If I saw it in an estate agent’s window, I’d probably have walked by,’ says Lucinda Chambers, with typical British understatement, of her 19th-century former farmhouse in Toulouse, at which she has holidayed with her husband Simon and their three sons for the past 22 years.

The property’s simple exterior gives no hint of what awaits inside. Chambers, a former Vogue fashion director and co-founder of fashion emporium Collagerie and sustainable label Colville, confesses that when it comes to décor, she ‘loves everything’. As such her home is a warm cornucopia of maximalist brocante finds that reflect her magpie tastes or, as she says, ‘where I like to go freestyle’.

In the sitting room, geometric rugs complement wicker chairs and mirrors, and elsewhere there are mismatched ceramics, beaded bottles and throws from local second-hand stores. Red-andwhite-striped fabric is a leitmotif that has been woven in as curtains, cushions and tablecloths. She laughs: ‘I’m unfussy. I wish I was more hard-nosed but I like stripes, pattern, Moroccan influences and objects found on my travels.’