It was a blind date that brought Australian designer Pippa Holt and Irish financier Conor Roche together in London in 2008. Set up by art dealer Oscar Humphries — the son of the actor, satirist and inventor of the character Dame Edna Everage, Barry Humphries — the date resulted in Holt, who was then an editor at British Vogue, marrying Roche and moving to Dublin.
She continued to work as a contributing editor at Vogue for six years from Speranza, her home with Roche at 75 Leeson Street Upper, before establishing her eponymous company Pippa Holt Kaftans in 2016. Though she credits much of the design at her Leeson Street home to husband Conor, colour and design run deep though the Australian’s blood. Her grandmother Dame Zara Holt, a fashion designer, founded the label Magg in Melbourne in the 1950s, and painted the residence she shared with her husband — former prime minister Harold Holt — a shocking pink. Zara’s daughter, Pippa’s mother, also worked in fashion and she ran the Hermès boutique in Melbourne for 20 years.
The couple’s Dublin home, which they now share with their three children, is simply stunning, whereby an all-white palette allows their contemporary art and mid-century furniture collections to shine through.
Purchased in 2007, Roche had worked on transforming the property before meeting Holt: “Conor was doing really modern things to Speranza when I had first met him. He installed a poured cement floor [with a gloss effect] in the kitchen and found incredible doors and windows at Clement in the UK. He had also commissioned a custom Aga for the kitchen,” says the designer, who has styled Cara Delevingne, Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley.
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Set over three floors, the house has a generous 371 sq m (3,995 sq ft) of floor space and the fact that it is end of terrace means the kitchen, which lies at garden level, is full of light. It has four bedrooms, five reception rooms and a spacious kitchen with breakfastroom.
Set well back behind electric gates, a bank of white mop-head hydrangea and tall silver birch trees create a natural divide between the house and the parking bay for three cars. But due to its location you could easily live here without a vehicle, as the city and all amenities are within walking distance, with buses and the Luas close by. The Aircoach to Dublin Airport has a stop across the road.
The property retains lots of period features such as fireplaces, cornicing, timber sash windows. New additions by craftsman David Coyne of Oikos give lots of storage in custom made units at garden level.
The kitchen by Poggenpohl is lovely and, despite being installed in 2009, it still feels contemporary and new. Bathrooms with fittings by Drummonds, some of which have De Gournay wallpaper, are also impressive with the main having a period sink sourced at an auction in London, while the glazed shelving units came from a shop in New York.
“It is very much an amalgamation of our travels,” says Holt, who is designing her Spring/Summer 2023 collection from one of the nicest rooms in the house. Her office, in what was a bedroom perched at the top of the house, has a barrelled ceiling with light flooding in from a huge arched window. Here a contemporary desk sourced at auction in Chicago sits alongside period radiators overlooked by an art nouveau light.
A bonus to the garden, designed by Pip Collier Gardens, is an elevated deck that sits above the kitchen extension. Accessed from the fourth bedroom and externally by a spiral staircase, it is a lovely area to enjoy evening sundowners or morning coffees.
The family are moving to a new project and have placed their lovely home, which is Ber-exempt and in turnkey condition, on the market through Knight Frank seeking €3.5 million.
