I didn’t have a set of interview questions. I merely walked into Few & Far, an eclectic design and treasures shop on Brompton Road in London. It was on my design map. I spent the first few minutes eyeing the delicate leaf plates (made of brittle leaves and therefore impossible to buy and tuck into a suitcase), a red stool with a base of fanned pages made by Paola Navone, and white plates, bowls and dishes that look like they fluttered down from the treetops  with their uneven leaf-like edges by Brigitte de Bazelaire.

A tall striking man with sweeping gestures and a gentlemanly demeanor almost immediately offered Priscilla to me after I explained my visit. “I’ll go see if she’s free?”  His instant receptivity gave me a smile.

This is one woman who truly has made an imprint on our visual imagination as design director at Conrans and head of styling for a product group at Habitat (where in the 60s the sales women had Vidal Sassoon haircuts and wore Mary Quant dresses), alongside her brother, Sir Terence Conran who opened the first multi-disciplinary design studio in England. Conrans was heavily influenced by the American modernists. According to the Conran history slideshow on the site “Habitat embodied a world in which more women worked and people increasingly took holidays abroad.” Hallelujah.

While I waited, I was ushered downstairs by a very knowledgeable and affable young woman who explained a line of architectural clothing that you tie, loop, and tailor on your own body, with conceptual styling in the vein of Rei Kawakubo.  I took a moment to walk out to Mint next door and the Libby Sellers pop up gallery and when I returned ten minutes later Priscilla was there waiting for me wearing a blue tab collar blouse, pants, and no makeup, just a summer glow, with tousled well cut gray hair and bright blue eyes. Cappuccinos were placed in front of us and she folded her hands ready to begin. It was obvious that she was a seasoned interview subject.

Here’s what I learned:

Priscilla believes that women are natural at managing design.

She believes that design has focused too much on designer personalities, which to her, isn’t the point.

The point of design is  beauty, utility, and the material.

She believes the recession is an opportunity to change that.  People have a chance to connect to design again.  To place value on quality, to pay for the better made object and go for longevity.

She says, ‘cheap things are historically made under terrible conditions, you know.’

She advises to save for the thing of quality. To buy something you have an emotional attachment to.

She also thinks we have lost the art of living life where some of the best things are indeed free.

It’s that spectrum between free and costly quality that bothers her most.

Priscilla is not a retailer. She’s a shopkeeper.

She explains the difference: Shopkeeping is about having passion for the things in your store.

Shopkeepers can sell buckets and string but they know their customers. They sit down and have a cup of tea.

‘I’m not buying into any kind of a market.’

What matters most to her in her store are beautifully wrapped parcels, care taken, an informative staff.

I ask her about women starting businesses.

“This might not sound terribly liberated but one of the most creative thing you can do as a woman is bring up a child. But don’t juggle. It’s not on,” she says. “You don’t have a child like you have a washing machine. That’s why there are so many problems. It’s not the government or the schools responsibilities. It’s the parents responsibility.

She advocates a simpler way of life. A way of life that is not so demanding.  Maybe this is a shift in her thinking after a long and busy career and with her current pared-down focus.

But you had a career, I say, a long one.

“Yes but I had my children first.”

I hesitate and say, that happens less and less.

She nods at what my grandfather would call ‘a conundrum in a vacuum’ then I take a look around me and the conversation moves back to design.

‘I’m a photographer by training. It all started with an eye for the picture’ she tells me.

She tells me she changes things all the time.

“It’s important to be constantly changing,” she says.

-Chauncey Zalkin

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