18.02.09  Sunday Times 15.02.09

How to redecorate your house after divorce

When Amanda Eliasch’s husband moved out, how did she cope? By redecorating, of course!

Amanda Eliasch hates interior designers. And bankers, and sunlight, and babies. But especially interior designers. “They kill off any chance of someone having a personality in their home,” she says. What she loves is colour. And there’s so much of it in her house in Belgravia that you find yourself reaching for your sunglasses as you step inside.

After her divorce in 2007 from Johan Eliasch, 47, a Swedish tycoon and former deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, the glamorous photographer and socialite began a complete overhaul of the seven-bedroom stucco-fronted home on Chester Square they had shared for 18 years.

“I had the need to redecorate,” she says. “After you’ve been together such a long time, your old marital home becomes fiercely depressing. I felt that if I didn’t make changes, I would be lost in the past, and even though there are things you want to preserve and keep, to carry on living in them feels empty. So I changed everything.”

Eliasch, 48, insists that the split from her husband, whose fortune was estimated last year at £400m by The Sunday Times Rich List, was amicable. Though they have two sons, Charlie, 17, and Jack, 13, theirs was an open marriage – she was linked with Jean-Louis Sebagh, a cosmetic surgeon, and he with a Brazilian beauty.

I wonder how a minimalist Swede could have stood a day in Eliasch’s intentionally over-the-top home, never mind 20 years. “He's colour-blind,” she says. Even so, Johan was as enthusiastic that she give the house a makeover as she was. He came over after the divorce to tell her to change the bedroom, in particular, to make it easier for her to share it with another man. “But I still couldn’t have a boyfriend over here,” she insists. “It would be too weird.”

That bedroom is now a heady mix of black walls, bedclothes and cupboards, with gold and pink wallpaper by Sera Hersham Loftus, a favourite with the Notting Hill set. Distinctly gothic in flavour, it is her favourite room, where she spends most of her time: “All I need is a bedroom. In my next house, I may have one big bedroom and nothing else.”

As she perches on a red velvet couch in the living room, her Marilyn Monroe-style blonde curls are in sharp contrast to her black dress, much as the colours clash in the rooms. It is something she learnt from Ken Turner, the leading celebrity florist, for whom she worked in her twenties. “If you clash colours in a bouquet, it will look as if you have more roses,” she explains. “I applied the same idea in my house. I don’t believe in minimalism.” You can see where she gets it from. Eliasch was born in Beirut to British parents, an opera-singer mother and a journalist father. Her parents divorced after 18 months; she was raised mostly by her grandfather, Sidney Gilliat, the director of the St Trinian’s films. “We are a weird mixture,” she says.

Eliasch’s acting days are another influence on her flamboyant style. “I was at drama school when I first did up the house, and I themed it accordingly,” she says. There was a Lady Macbeth dining room and a Titus Andronicus living room – all bright red and leopard-print. “It was a bit much,” she confesses. I nod along, drawn into her world, where neon-pink chairs and Marie Anto-inette busts are the norm. The dining room is now a deep blue.

The day I visit, she is packing to go to LA, where she will be throwing a party, with the burlesque star Dita Von Teese dancing for the guests. Her assistant keeps coming up to finalise last-minute details, asking, “What should we e-mail Nigella?” (presumably Mrs Charles Saatchi, whose husband called Eliasch the “new Cartier-Bresson”).

Her soirées are famous for their outlandish themes – astrology parties with palm-readers and yoga parties with gurus.Her “good friend” Tracey Emin is a regular guest. Does Emin like the decor? “She’s never said anything. But she’s different – her own place is cosy and homely, very neat.” She doesn’t reveal whether the artist makes her bed before leaving. Not that Emin’s opinion would matter to Eliasch. The house is stamped with her character and she says she enjoys the reaction on visitors’ faces. “I especially like it if someone says they hate it,” she says in her deep, theatrical voice.

The couple bought the six-floor, 5,500 sq ft house in 1988 for £400,000 – the price was low because it was on a short lease. (They are now freeholders.) By then, Johan, born into a wealthy industrialist family, had founded the Tufton group, which bought, restructured and resold companies, and set up an investment firm with Saatchi. He is the chairman of the sports company Head, and in September 2007 became an adviser to Gordon Brown on deforestation and clean energy.

The house had previously belonged to Penelope Gilliatt, who lived there with her husband, the playwright John Osborne, and commissioned the architect Hugh Casson to redesign the interior. It was not to Eliasch’s taste. “When we bought the house, it needed a huge job done to it,” she recalls. “It was all white, and white looks terrible on grey days. So we essentially pulled the whole thing apart and rebuilt it.”

Only a few features remain, such as the copper-clad doors leading from the hall into the drawing room, which were part of the set for the 1973 film adaptation of Osborne’s play Luther. Eliasch regrets how hasty she was in changing it all. “I was ignorant then,” she says. “There was an amazing central fireplace in the living room that I wish I’d kept.”

Two decades on – and countless redecorations later – not even painting the walls electric green and bringing in full-height imitation Greek sculptures can satisfy the need for change that divorce brings. “With the children away at boarding school, the house feels empty,” she says. “I can’t stay in such a big house and feel it isn’t being properly lived in.”

The house has been on the market for four months at £13.5m. Last month, her husband advised her to turn down the only offer she’d had because it wasn’t a good time to sell. To make things even more difficult, Eliasch is adamant that she won’t let just anyone buy it. “I’m funny about who I even let in here,” she says. Not they have to have her style: she expects any purchaser to put their own stamp on the house. So she quizzes her estate agent about potential buyers. Ideally, they should be artistic, with children and, if possible, a dog. Otherwise, she feels, it won’t be doing the house justice: “I don’t want it to end up as an investment. I want it to be used.”

Any artistic, dog-loving families with £13.5m should look lively. It might help if they are colour-blind, too.