My personal style signifier is sports- and swimwear – particularly my Youswim two-piece sets. I live in them; I have them in every single colour. It’s like Hunza G [in crinkle-stretch fabric] but I find the Youswim ones more elasticated. I’ve never been a fan of bras, with the wires and everything, and my boobs are quite small. This acts like a sports bra. Also, if I have to go out, I can just put on a pair of tailored trousers and some heels.
My life completely changed when I took up jiu-jitsu two and a half years ago. When I was younger, I was extremely sporty. I did kung fu; I did jiu-jitsu, but Japanese not Brazilian; I ran cross-country and track; I played lacrosse. But then I had a lot of trauma in my teens and sport went from being something that empowered me to a form of escapism, and a borderline addiction. After that, I was scared to get back into it. When I studied architecture at Cambridge they told us not to bother signing up to any societies – basically, “your life is architecture now”. And for a long time, it was. Having children opened my mind again, and I wanted a more balanced life. When my daughter, Max, started Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I was like, wow, this looks fun. And it is a really fun sport. I never go to the gym because I find it boring. But jiu-jitsu is like chess with your body. There are endless moves you can learn. I just got back from Las Vegas where I won gold at the IBJJF World Masters. I’m now a 2025 world champion, blue belt light-featherweight.
The last thing I bought and loved was my Yeti water bottle. I like to buy things that are associated with memory, not only aesthetics, and this bottle reminds me of competing in the Jiu Jitsu World League earlier this year, of how I turned 40 the day I flew out to Long Beach, California, and of not being defined by your age. I use it every day at training. It’s black but I’ve put stickers on it from the gyms I’ve trained at around the world – like a teenager that collects skateboard stickers.
I get constant inspiration from my home in Hampstead. It belonged to the sculptor Anthony Caro and straight away I loved how horizontal it is. Most London houses are so tall that you feel disconnected from the ground; this is the opposite. We called it the Ground House because it’s about being grounded, physically, emotionally or spiritually. My designs are about optimising your mental and physical health through connection to nature. The internal walls are all clay, dug up from the garden, so they’re really thick and solid but also hygroscopic, so they absorb and release humidity from the air. They’re much better for your health than, say, DIY plasterboard.
I moved to Hampstead because of the air quality. I grew up in the area but was living in east London when I had Max, who’s now nine. As a baby, she had eczema and breathing difficulties, which made me look into pollution levels in London; in many places they didn’t conform with the EU baseline standard. But in Hampstead, especially around the Heath and the higher up you go, the air was cleaner, so I started looking for a place there.
A place that means a lot to me is Forest Row, a village in East Sussex. Because city life is frenetic and I’m already quite a high-energy person, I need grounding, to be in nature – and I feel grounded in Forest Row. I have lots of friends there and now I’m working on a project. I found a great piece of land in the Ashdown Forest where I would like to bring together different elements of design, wellbeing, movement and community – whether that’s a kind of forestry project where you can do outdoor retreats, or a proper natural-build cabin where you could do yoga or jiu-jitsu, or a floating sauna on the lake.
And the best souvenir I’ve brought home is a pair of chairs by Geoffrey Bawa from Sri Lanka. I was there for the wedding of one of my best friends – he loves Geoffrey Bawa so I did a tour of all his hotels and houses. Bawa liked to design everything inside his buildings, like these curvy midcentury metal chairs for the Heritance Kandalama hotel, which I now have on my terrace. I got ripped off by some guy selling them in an antiques shop nearby, but they are beautiful and bring back good memories.
The podcast I’m listening to is The Sadhguru Podcast by the spiritual guru and yogi who founded the Isha Foundation in Coimbatore, India. I did yoga teacher training last year and the experience was life-changing. The inward looking, the reflection and trying to find stillness benefited me spiritually and emotionally, and that’s what I get from listening to Sadhguru. It’s a search for personal growth.
The best gift I’ve given in the past year is a Whoop fitness tracker to my partner, Vinicius. He does jiu-jitsu too – we met at a gym in Camden and now both train at Fightzone – and it tracks things like your heart rate, your sleep performance and detects how far you’ve pushed yourself. My problem is that I push myself too much but now I can see when my body’s struggling. It reminds me that you need to rest. Now I wake up and I’m like, “What percentage sleep were you? Mine was like 80 per cent.”
The last music I downloaded was “In the Real World” by Spanish musician Alex Serra. His music calms me down. I listen to music when I train and even when I meditate. Because my mind is very busy I struggle with silence.
I have a collection of hand-carved spoons. I did a whittling course at London Green Wood, a cooperative of woodworkers at Hackney City Farm, with my kids and my partner, and there’s also this great place in East Sussex called Wilderness Wood. So now I’ve carved quite a lot of spoons. I’ve got some by the teachers I’ve had, some made by Max; and my son River is obsessed with swords, so he’s carved a few.
The best way to spend £20 is on a sauna and cold dip. The Community Sauna Baths in Hackney are about £15. Or at the Lido on Hampstead Heath – you could swim in the freezing cold water, do the sauna and then have something in the café.
A material I love working with is wood. At the Ground House, all of the new structure is built in Douglas fir – grown in the UK and not treated with any chemicals, just oiled. Most wood from a timber yard is laced with chemicals. We also worked with an amazing company called Fallen & Felled, which was set up by a guy called Bruce Saunders. He realised that local councils and tree surgeons were chopping down trees and burning them – centuries-old oaks and London plane trees – and started saving them. So the panelling around the house is from two London plane trees: one from St James’s Park and another from Waterloo. Every piece is completely different, and really beautiful.
In my fridge you’ll always find salmon, avocados, butter, rocket, lettuce, chicken, soy yoghurt and fresh mint – which we grow in the garden as well as wild strawberries and raspberries, but those always get eaten before they hit the fridge.
My well-being guru is Laurens Holve. He’s an osteopath and acupuncturist – and my miracle worker. What he does is just magic; my neck could be totally frozen and he comes and sticks a few needles in, and it just releases.
A work of art that changed everything for me is the home of my friend Adam Weismann and his wife Katy Bryce, the founders of Clayworks, a producer of natural clay plasters. They’re pure natural builders and they live in Cornwall in an amazing little cob house. Their whole way of being is totally at one with nature. They don’t even have electricity. They just live by their circadian rhythm. I think that way of life is art. Personally, I’d struggle to go that far – I like my creature comforts – but it’s inspirational.
My style icon is my friend Bianca Chu. She works as a curator for Nocturn and advises the artist estates of Kim Lim and William Turnbull. The way she dresses is truly authentic to her – it’s just an extended expression of the energy that’s within. She has a fun, bubbly personality and she wears quite outlandish pieces, like big hats. She’s not trying to be stylish but she looks amazing.
The one artist whose work I would collect if I could is Minjae Kim. He makes furniture but I consider his pieces art. They’re just really beautiful. I would love one of his chairs; they are like little cartoon characters but without being naff or cheesy – they’re beautifully crafted but also tasteful and elegant. Just from seeing the work, you feel that there’s a passion and a joy in making them.
My biggest pet peeve in a hotel is an uncomfortable mattress. Ultimately, if I don’t sleep well, that is a failure – especially if it’s a nice hotel. A bad night’s sleep ruins the whole of the next day.
The objects I would never part with are my children’s drawings. I just love them and have them in frames all over the house. They remind you of specific moments in time. River is five but I look at his drawings of when he was two and they make me realise how precious life is because they grow so fast. He drew Brazil when we were on holiday there and it so perfectly captured the energy of that trip and yet you cannot tell what on earth she’s drawn. It’s just kind of curly lines but you can tell it’s nature-inspired. It’s an insight into their psyche as well.
On my Instagram “For You” page you’ll mainly find jiu-jitsu techniques, I’m afraid. It’s very unglamorous. Occasionally I get a parenting or wellbeing quote.
My favourite building is a treehouse in Florianópolis on the Brazilian island of Santa Catarina. We stayed on Lagoa da Conceição in this amazing house that had been self-built by a local healer out of rammed earth and wood. It just had so much love in it. She’d cast coloured bottles into the walls so that when the light shone through you got rainbows on the ground. It wasn’t slick at all, but just so beautiful, and in an incredible setting.
My favourite app is Notes because I love writing a list and organising my thoughts. Every morning I’m like, OK, these are the goals for today. I have to write my bullet points before I meditate because otherwise I spend my whole meditation thinking about the things I’m going to do. On the whole, though, I try to avoid being on screens. My kids are not allowed screens at all.
When I need to feel inspired I immerse myself in nature – whether it’s swimming in the Ponds on Hampstead Heath or walking in the forest. Often, though, I have too many ideas. And when you try to do too many things, you don’t do them well. Being still helps me sift through them and reflect, being like, ‘You know actually, maybe that one wasn’t such a good idea’.
The last item of clothing I added to my wardrobe was a sweatshirt and T-shirt by Santo Studio, a new jiu-jitsu studio in California that has a clothing line. I spend most of my time in sportswear.
In another life I would have been a landscape designer. I know that sounds quite similar to what I already do, but if you ask me the name of any of the plants in my garden I can’t tell you. I can tell you which ones I like the look of — the tall and purple texture of this one, this kind of fluffy furry one. I worked on the garden with designer Mark Rogers, who has a studio called Hortus Collective, and now I spend so much time out here that I want to understand more about it. We also planted a vegetable garden at the front and it’s so satisfying.
I believe in life after death – I don’t know how exactly, but I believe that life goes on. What I find compelling is that our cells regenerate every seven years and yet we have a continuity in our consciousness and spirit that transcends physical matter. So when all of our matter is dead, why would our spirit die if it hasn’t every seven years? I also feel like life comes from life – like when your food waste goes into the soil it becomes new life. When your apple rots, at what point does it not exist? It might exist in a different form, but it continues to become something else.
The beauty staples I’m never without are very few! I don’t wear make-up. I have a great gel moisturiser by Antipodes – it’s not too greasy and it smells amazing – and Ffern perfume. Antipodes Baptise hydrating gel, £32, hollandandbarrett.com
My favourite room in my house is difficult to choose. I love the kitchen; I spend a lot of time in there cooking for my kids and when I’m at the sink looking over the trees, I don’t feel like I’m in London. But I also love the living room because it blends into the garden and gets south-facing light – even in winter you bathe in sunlight all day and it feels really good. What I love about my bedroom is that the two windows slide back completely, so I can be in bed staring at a tree. Having designed my home myself, I had visualised all of these moments in my head first, so seeing them as a reality is so satisfying.
I’ve recently discovered Hu Almond Butter and Crispy Quinoa chocolate. Oh my gosh. I can eat a bar very quickly. I feel like it’s healthier than Cadbury’s; it probably isn’t, but it’s not really sweet. £3.49 for 60g, healf.com
An easy way to help change the world is by being kind. I think that energy spreads; if you’re kind to somebody, it inspires more kindness.
The best bit of advice I ever received was to sleep on it. My lawyer said that a lot when I was getting divorced. My partner says it to me often too. When you’re triggered or in a fluster you don’t make the best decisions, and then you regret them. The longer I reflect on something the better informed a choice I’m able to make. Sometimes you take a step out and you’re like, “Wow, why did I waste my energy worrying about that?”
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