A Guide to London (By Colour)

So you think London is a predominantly monochromatic town? 

Well, it is, but come summer, there's an explosion of glorious colour – in the floral borders of the parks, in the boutiques, even in the tea salons, where bright shades replace the traditionally muted tones on the menus in celebration of the warmer season.

Here's a tiny glimpse of where you can find colour in London. 

Designers Guild, Chelsea.

A profusion of colour in textiles and wallpapers. 

They had pulled out all the pinks and greens in anticipation of Chelsea Flower Show week, and the displays were enough to make you forget the prices and buy one in every colour.

Number Sixteen Hotel, South Kensington.

Still my favourite bolthole.

My favourite rooms at Number Sixteen, the Schiaparelli-pink single rooms, which have enormous French doors out to an equally enormous terrace overlooking the street. Great value if you don't mind a small bed and can book in advance.

Kate Spade, Chelsea.

Their entry for the Chelsea in Bloom exhibition this year wasn't elaborate, but it was still gorgeous.

Ms Lulu Guinness' handbag boutique in Chelsea, which is a paen to pretty colour.

An exhibition in the Chelsea Flower Show's floral marquee. 

This was the orchid display. Isn't it beautiful? 

I've never seen an orchid I didn't like.

Another sublime garden at Chelsea this year. 

This was the Brewin Dolphin Garden, designed by Robert Myers Associates and built by Willerby Landscapes. This one had a lipstick-pink wall, which acted as a stunning backdrop against the pleached trees and the pink and green borders. 

It was awarded a Gold medal. No wonder.

The Gore hotel in Kensington.

If you need somewhere to stay that isn't too expensive and close to everything, The Gore is fantastic. It's right next door to the Royal Albert Hall and a few steps from Hyde Park and the V&A. The interiors are a flamboyant mix of traditional and whimsical. 

Very eccentric. Very British. And very, very friendly.

A secret corner of London, tucked away between Kensington Road, Palace Gate/Gloucester Road and Cromwell Road. Loved wandering around here one morning.

More Designers Guild. 

Don't come here if you're averse to colour.

Lina Stores in Soho.

A lovely little deli/food store that's like an old-fashioned general store.

The Draper's Arms pub in Islington. 

A great little local that non-locals treks miles to visit.

Look at that Kelly green bar. Just beautiful.

A store in Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill. 

Westbourne Grove is the hot new spot for great furniture if you're wandering Portobello Road markets on a Saturday. It's where a lot of really interesting dealers have decamped to, and the stores are just as lovely as the stock.

Yet another Designers Guild. 

No, this post isn't sponsored. But if DG wants to toss a cushion this way, I wouldn't say no...

Paul Smith's store. 

Paul Smith is a firm proponent of colour. Have you seen his wallpaper? 

The Prêt-à-Portea high tea at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge. 

Went here with a few particularly lovely people on a quiet afternoon. 

We loved the Jason Wu-inspired coconut hatbox-shaped cake bag in retro leopard print chocolate. It was almost too beautiful to eat...

The Hollywood Arms pub in Chelsea. 

Another stylish little hideaway if you're looking for a place to have drinks with the girls, or even a date on a Friday night.

Portobello Road. 

Isn't this house uplifting?

It's a great sight to see as you make your way to the weekend markets...

More Portobello Road.

I loved the Portobello markets. I'd forgotten how much fun it was.

An exquisite door near our hotel in South Kensington. 

It's the perfect shade for a front door, really.

More from Lina Stores in Soho. 

Told you it looked like an old-fashioned general store.

The relatively new Ambersand Hotel in South Kensington. 

Although we didn't have high tea here, the displays did look inviting. And they matched the decor too. Just splendid. As the English would say.

More from the Berkeley's haute couture-inspired high tea.

A fantastic store called The Exchange, which is on Gloucester Road. (There is another in Chelsea.) This boutique had the most extraordinary display of vintage and gently worn designer garb in London. Many of the shoes and clothes still had the tickets attached. I bought a pair of Chanel heels here for 100 pounds. But I could have bought half the store.

A lastly, there is a great little bookstore called Heywood Hill in Mayfair, where you'll find the most interesting (and most colourful) display of titles in the West End. 

I unearthed a heap of vintage Cecil Beatons here for very cheap. Some were even signed.

Potterton Books in Chelsea was another great literary find. They had some gorgeous gardening books. And the staff of both were some of the nicest you'll meet.

Dior, Diana, and Doody...

Last month, on a sunny spring day in May, a few of us decided to go on a day trip. I found a mini-coach and a lovely driver and we trundled out of Paris and wound our way through the countryside to the far coast of Normandy.

 It was French equivalent of a sartorial road trip: a 6-hour return journey to see the home and garden of a designer we all deeply adore.

Monsieur Christian Dior.

Monsieur Dior's childhood home isn't really on the tourist radar. It's really only for devoted Dioristas. But we had an extra special reason for going: a woman who made the entire day worthwhile. 

Ms Doody Taylor.

Now Doody Taylor (such a fabulous name) is one of the most glamorous woman I've ever come across: imbued with the kind of innate elegance, style and grace you used to see in the 1950s but don't really come across anymore. 

Her sense of aesthetics shouldn't have come as such a surprise, because her godmother, Diana Gregory (above), was one of Christian Dior's most loved mannequins. 

Diana Gregory was one of the few Australian girls to model for Dior. She also became one of the couturier's favourites, thanks to her down-to-earth personality and refined sense of style. 

Doody remembers living in Europe in 1968, when she was working in London and newly engaged to her husband Jim, and being invited by Diana to visit her in Paris for the weekend. Diana was, says Doody, "divinely eccentric". 

"I remember she often wore a little black Dior shift dress with long string of pearls, which she wore draped down her back, with a choker at the front. And she loved to carry a long tapered tortoise-shell cigarette holder, which she waved all over the place, tossing ash everywhere! She was so effortlessly glamorous," says Doody. "She really had that kind of throw-away elegance that can't be bought."

Indeed, Diana only ever wore little black Dior dresses; "sometimes with heels; sometimes with long knee-high boots." 

It was a wardrobe that was one part sophistication and three parts pure fun.

On the weekend that Doody and Jim travelled to Paris, Diana arranged for them to visit the Dior salon for a special showing. 

"It was a tiny salon but oh, so elegant," recalls Doody, "and we sat perched on a staircase, goggle-eyed, as the impossibly tall, incredibly slim mannequins swished past us in swirls of silk. I remember their perfume wafting over us." For a relatively naive 21-year-old girl from Adelaide it was a wonderful experience. "I was in a state of euphoria!" she recalls.

Can you imagine?

For much of the bus trip back to Paris from Normandy, we grilled Doody on her glorious godmother Diana, and on Diana's wardrobe; shoes; boyfriends; job (imagine the fashion perks?), and her soignee lifestyle. It was a rare insight into the world of haute couture fashion, and by the end of it, we were as in awe of Doody as we were of Diana.

The tragic thing is, while Diana's archives are now with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, nobody knows what became of all her Dior gowns. They simply disappeared. 

But Doody remains philosophical. 

"Wherever they are," she says, "I am sure they will be as loved as when Diana wore them..."

'Dior Impressions', an exhibition of Dior gowns through the decades, is now showing at Dior's house and garden in Granville, Normandy, until September 2013.

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