Interiors: a blast of colour for David Hockney's former home – in pictures

The first time Melissa North, above, saw the west London flat that would become her home, it was 1964 and David Hockney was living there, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by canvasses. The artist had just moved to London from Yorkshire to go to art college, where the pair had met. “Back then, Notting Hill was poor and dangerous,” North says, “and all the artists lived here. I remember walking into David’s room – he couldn’t afford any more space – and the floorboards were covered in paint.” Hockney’s erstwhile studio, on a quiet street close to Portobello Road, is today North’s front room. Photograph: Anna Huix

By the late 1960s, Hockney had become a successful artist and could afford to buy the whole flat. North, in turn, was working as an interior decorator; she would later design Soho’s Groucho Club in its original 1984 incarnation, modelling it on New York’s Algonquin hotel. “All mismatched colours and shabbiness, which was the opposite of the cold, chrome look that was so popular back then,” she remembers. “When the backers came into the club the first time, they were a bit taken aback.” Her boyfriend was a young architect, Tchaik Chassay, above (she’d met him at a debutante dance and fallen “madly in love”, but it would be some years before they got together properly). She introduced him to Hockney, who commissioned Tchaik (a childhood nickname) to redesign his entire apartment, including a small studio at the top where he could work. Chassay’s designs still stand today. Here he is, in front of a portrait of him by Hockney. Photograph: Anna Huix

In 1970, a heartbroken Hockney fled to Paris after he split with his boyfriend, artist Peter Schlesinger. The designer Ossie Clarke, a friend, house-sat for him, but proved an unreliable custodian: “When David came back, he discovered Ossie had thrown out his fireplace, just because he didn’t like it,” North says. “David was furious.” He didn’t want to live in the flat any more – there were too many memories – so he put it on the market, for £25,000, and North and Chassay bought it. “You couldn’t buy a cupboard for that round here now,” North says. Photograph: Anna Huix

It has been their home for 40 years: a rambling apartment that mixes English country house style with shocks of colour and calm, modern lines. It snakes and curls around, with curved walls and floors on different levels. Private but spacious rooms peel off the hallway like leaves on a stem. At the front is a luminous green sitting room that looks and feels like a jewellery box (it required 14 colours to capture the precise shade North wanted). It’s filled with colourful vintage furniture in yellows, reds and blues, and a chocolate-brown carpet. On one wall hangs a photograph of North and her son, Clancy, by Tina Barney, pictured above. Photograph: Anna Huix

At the back, a sunken dining room is almost entirely occupied by a large table and giant plants that crawl over the split wall from the kitchen, like set pieces from The Little Shop Of Horrors (pictured, above). The photograph by artists Jane and Louise Wilson, was taken at Greenham Common. The couple’s bedroom features, at one end, a sleigh bed covered in sheepskin rugs and at the other a study area centred around a large desk and two plump armchairs. The room is overflowing with piles of books and every surface is filled with photographs. Photograph: Anna Huix

These days, North does more interior design work for people than for clubs. Past clients include Paul Simon and David Gilmour. “I arrived at his house,” she says of the latter, “and he showed me an orange scarf and said, ‘Make my bedroom like this!’ The worst thing you can do is impose your look. Interior design is very intimate, and you want to draw out the client’s style. I often look at what they’re wearing to get a sense of it.” Chassay runs his own architecture practice, Chassay Studio, and the couple still collaborate; North oftens designs and furnishes his domestic projects. Today, their home is a little quieter than in its 1960s and 1970s heyday. Back then, the neighbourhood was beginning to change “in the most incredible way”, North says, and everyone suddenly seemed to be hanging out at the Chassays’. Their flat became “a party house”: the couple love to socialise, and having two children didn’t slow them down. Photograph: Anna Huix

To say that they have played host to a few interesting guests is like pointing out that one or two celebrities have visited the Groucho Club. Once, Quentin Tarantino turned up; another time, Pedro Almodóvar. Even the most practised hostesses can sometimes stumble, however: when Paul and Linda McCartney were invited to a dinner party, she accidentally served them meat. “I forgot about the vegetarian thing. Oh well.” North says she has learned more about people from her job than from any amount of socialising. “Men are always very particular about bathrooms and bedrooms: the practical things. In every other matter, they’re easy-going.” She has also learned a lot about herself. “Being a decorator involves shopping and being incredibly nosy.” She grins. “It is the perfect job for me.” (Pictured above: the painting is from nearby Portobello Market, and the wall hanging was picked up in Turkey). Photograph: Anna Huix