It’s hard to imagine that the Ibiza home of British fashion editor Deborah Brett and her writer/director husband Tom Edmunds, was once the wild card in a quartet of homes they were shown to buy. ‘It looked like something out of Narcos,’ laughs Deborah, as she recalls their first viewing six years ago. ‘We looked straight past the dead trees and obligatory Buddha in the garden, past the proliferation of bright orange crenelated walls and gauche tower with thick bars on all the windows, to the property’s incredible location.’ With uninterrupted views out towards Es Vedra, an uninhabited island that is steeped in folklore, mysticism and Greek mythology – the location of the house is all the more spectacular because it gives the feeling of being right on the sea. ‘When we discovered that the house had access via a dirt path to our favorite beach, a rarity in Ibiza, the deal was sealed,’ adds Tom.
For Deborah, who has been going to the Balearic Islands ever since she was a child, the desire to recreate her childhood holidays for her own children Phineas (10), Hermione (8) and Ottilie (5) – was a strong motivator. In fact, Tom and Deborah had made Ibiza their summer destination of choice long before they had children, not for the party aspects of the island but because they loved the rugged roughness and the ease and proximity of island life. Not to mention the accessibility from London where they live. ‘There is a sensibility to the Balearics that we love,’ says Deborah. ‘A wildness where the smell of pine trees and the red dirt roads – offer a necessary balm that is contrast to our life in the city.’
Initially the couple did nothing more than a quick styling job on the house, painting everything white to give a more calming atmosphere. ‘Anyone who has ever tried to buy in Ibiza will know that it’s an epic endeavour,’ says Deborah. ‘Getting your building plans passed is no less laborious and so it was three years before we could begin to make changes, but by then we had time enough to experience the house and understand how we wanted to live in it.’ As they couldn’t change the structure of the house and had to keep to the original façade and footprint, the main thrust of the rebuild and renovation was to make it more practical for family living and to find ways in which they could live to the outdoors.
In the hands of its design-savvy owners, this former nondescript Ibizan house has been cleverly converted into an airy, light-filled space defined by ocean, mountain and texture.
Working with their local builder, Jon Broekman, Deborah and Tom reconfigured the spaces to create a two-storey house with the living and kitchen areas as well as two children’s bedrooms on the ground floor, while the master en-suite is upstairs. ‘We love having guests but there’s something quite wonderful about everyone having their own space, hence the self-contained two-bedroom cottage just across the courtyard, and a one-bedroom suite underneath the pool for errant godparents,’ quips Deborah.
When it came to the interiors, Deborah and Tom knew exactly what they wanted too. ‘We both felt quite strongly that we wanted a blue and white house. Not a crisp Nantucket-type nautical scheme but more of a faded, worn and beachy look with lots of natural textures and earthy elements to marry the mood of the island,’ she explains. ‘In fact, from the very first moment that I walked into the massive courtyard, I told Tom that I wanted to tile the entire area in blue and white tiles and to sink the vegetation and trees down into the ground.’ This was a bold move but one that has successfully set the tone for the rest of the home’s interior scheme.
The couple were quick to enlist the help of interior designer Hubert Zandberg, who had worked with them on their London home and whom they trusted implicitly. ‘I knew that Hubert would be brilliant at scaling the interiors up a notch to make our ideas bolder and more sassy,’ says Deborah. ‘My role was to give another point of view,’ agrees Hubert. ‘Both Deborah and Tom are incredibly creative with very sophisticated taste levels, so it was very much a process of collaboration where we facilitated their wishes to create a bolder, more glamorous result.’
Although based in London, Hubert’s childhood in South Africa has given him an instinctive feel for the rough textures and natural elements that they were looking for. Beloved for his eclectic yet highly considered approach to interiors, Hubert kept to the monochromatic blue theme but used everything from raw brick to stone, rope, leather, wicker and straw to ground the various blues and patterns that have been employed throughout. ‘In any other incarnation so much pattern and different shades of blue might have been overwhelming but here the natural textures work to anchor the elements and are read as neutral,’ explains Hubert, whose exhaustive design knowledge and uncanny knack for sourcing the unusual and the interesting was put to good use here. Hubert and his team concentrated on finding the best artisans on the island and personally visited every workshop and studio to establish the level of craftsmanship and local materials on offer. This was necessary as Deborah wanted all the built-in cupboards in every room to have different designs and use of material. ‘Built-in cupboards are so often overlooked and found wanting in the aesthetic department and I really wanted them to have personality.’ To this end, Hubert and Deborah devised different designs for each room comprising bamboo, leather, seagrass and rope that cut a stylish swathe and add interest.
‘Collaborative design is such a potent and magical thing in that everyone brings their strengths to the overall concept,’ says Hubert. ‘Tom for example didn’t want clutter in the house and so that guided us enormously throughout the entire process in that nothing is here without reason.’ Similarly, Deborah and Hubert guided the aesthetic process to create an eloquent decorative expression that is both timeless and dynamic. ‘The house really came into its own last summer in that it felt complete,’ adds Deborah. ‘This is a place where both Tom and I get much creative refuelling as it allows us the space as a family to regroup and lead a simpler life for a while,’ says Deborah. ‘You can’t put a price on that.’ And with Deborah’s recent foray into ceramics t(hat is seeing her take commissions) and Tom’s debut feature film ‘Dead in a Week’ released in the US late last year, it’s a place that we predict will become ever more important to their creative process.
