Boho on sea: A stay at fashion designer Pearl Lowe’s coastal retreat

It’s that time of the year when everyone starts asking if you’re going anywhere nice on your summer holidays. In a “celebrity sells” era, you could up the bragging rights ante by telling them that you’re renting Pearl Lowe’s summer house, a seaside spot just a pebble’s throw from the beach on England’s sunny south coast.

Adorned with a mosaic of shells and brimming with bohemian tempo, Pearl’s on Sea is a laid-back luxury east Sussex shack with hot tub and outdoor pool, just a 10-minute stroll from Winchelsea Beach, near Hastings.

Making the purchase has fulfilled a lifelong dream, she says, for she’s always been drawn to the siren call of the sea – she even has an image of the big blue as her screensaver.

“It’s so soothing. All my worries seem to disappear,” says Lowe.

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She bought the place during lockdown last year. Situated down a private road in a village between Hastings and Rhye, towns replete with browsable shops, the clapboard property, built in the 1940s, wooed her from the minute she set eyes on it.

“The exterior is adorned with this extraordinary and enchanting mosaic of shells and pebbles collected from the beach,” she explains. The mural, which wraps around the ground floor of the two-storey house, was created by an artist who lived here all those years ago. “I think this is the reason why I fell in love with the property when I saw it for the first time.”

Pearl’s been a singer, a songwriter, a designer and a decorator. She fronted several bands, toured Europe and back in the late 1990s was part of the hard-partying Primrose Hill set that included Kate Moss and Sadie Frost, and whose antics regularly made red-top headlines. When it all got too much she climbed on the wagon and departed London for the green pastures of Somerset.

But one thing has remained consistent: her innate style and her love of all things vintage, from dresses to dressers and drapes.

She’s turned her talent for design into launching a range of cushions, tablecloths and lace curtains, and also sells a collection of clothing that her youngest daughter Betty models for her. Her eldest daughter is well-known model and former Strictly star Daisy Lowe.

Pearl decorates using the same boho aesthetic that informs her dressing style. It’s a mix of flea market finds layered with antique shop sources. Her mother was an interior designer and had a shop in Covent Garden.

“She was constantly buying houses, doing them up and selling them on,” she explains. “She also had a fantastic wardrobe that included Ossie Clarke, Missoni and Oscar de la Renta.” Time spent in the shop schooled Lowe’s style and steeled her business sense.

“While it is definitely our family retreat, it is also a business,” she explains. “I rent it out. It’s very lacey. I didn’t want a bog-standard beach house with ships. There is no blue ticking.”

Working on a word-of-mouth basis, Lowe goes on regular buying trips, sometimes for a client, but also believes in buying anything she sees that she likes, whether she has a client in mind to sell it to or not.

“You have to buy it and find a room to put it in rather than waiting for the right piece to come along when you have a commission.”

This approach, what some might call hoarding, means that her husband, Danny Goffey, of the rock band Supergrass, and her children all collectively groan when they see her driving home with her car laden to the roof with finds.

“Sometimes the house can feel like a shop,” she says, only half joking. “And sometimes you do bring moths back. I can’t have cashmere in the house.”

She’s also not averse to removing pieces from the house to help finish a job, even admitting to rolling up a rug up from under her husband’s feet while he was watching TV.

“It’s like living with a dealer,” she laughs. “Everything is for sale.”

For her, she says, the thrill is in the hunt. “It’s not about money at all.”

Her beach buy comprises two properties: the main house, which has four bedrooms, as well as a two-bedroom cabin out the back. The clapboard-fronted house is surrounded by decking and there is an outdoor swimming pool that you can use during the warmer summer months as well as a Swedish hot tub for two. It can sleep up to eight and costs from £6,150 (€7,245) per week through Unique Home Stays.

For the most part the walls, ceilings and floors are all coated in Pointing, a soft white by Farrow & Ball. “It’s a look I love,” she says, “but it is very high-maintenance”. The floors are painted in a more hard-wearing colour – Linen Wash, by Little Greene – and need a refresher coat at least once a year.

The house has the feel of a seaside resort with a maritime vibe, from the lace curtains that adorn every window to the internal porthole doors. The relaxed atmosphere includes plush velvet seating. Standouts include an Alice sofa from the interiors collection by Soho House Home.

The accommodation features French-style beds topped with satin eiderdowns and big, chintzy prints on billowy curtains.

In the garden there are disco balls aplenty, a favourite decorative trope of hers. In one corner there’s a table draped in a lacy shawl, a parasol by Sunbeam Jackie overhead.

The property has also inspired her new book. Faded Glamour by the Sea (Cico Books, €34.99) is Lowe’s ode to the English seaside, and a window into the celebrity cribs of some of her friends.

You can peek inside the coastal cottage of the model and photographer Helen Christensen, which is situated a few hours’ drive from Copenhagen, peer into a very British beach hut belonging to the artist Claire Fletcher, who grew up in Greenisland, Co Antrim overlooking Belfast Lough, and stay in the Albion Rooms, a hotel on the esplanade in Margate, which is jointly owned by Libertines frontmen Carl Barât and Peter Doherty, and has a salty rock’n’roll sensibility.