Venetia Scott Makes Magazine Covers Beneath the Soaring Ceilings of Her Former Postal Office-Turned-Apartment

The British fashion photographer-stylist-creative director lives inside the same kind of immersive worlds she crafts for her iconic shootsVenetia Scott, wearing a vintage Zandra Rhodes dress, in the sitting room of her London home. The sofa is upholstered in a fabric by GP & J Baker, and the pillows are made with a Nobilis tiger print. Portrait by Venetia Scott.Photo by Venetia ScottThe woman in the photographs always looks as if she might be somewhere in the 1970s. It’s the frisson given off by the furniture around her, or by the strange surroundings of some Brutalist art-park or forest clearing. You’ll find yourself wondering: What is she doing there? Who is this well-dressed enigma at the center of the picture, looking you dead in the eye? Photography by Venetia Scott impresses itself on you like that—an entire aesthetic world, made by an ultra-discreet British fashion photographer-polymath who lives and works at the end of a quiet street in North Kensington.The exterior of the Victorian-era building Things begin to make complete autobiographical sense when Scott opens her door. At first sight, there’s a vertical view of dark green walls, soaring up beneath the apex of a Victorian-era industrial light-filled roof. “This was a postal sorting office. I bought it in 2004 from the artist Felicia Larsson, who painted in her studio here.” Larsson had had it designed by the architecture firm Orefelt Associates, who built in tall, finlike piers to support an upper living floor, with bedrooms tucked away beneath.Photographs by Roni Horn hang above a hide-covered Barcelona bench by Mies van der Rohe in the entry, which is painted a dark green hue by Paint & Papers. ART: © 2026 Roni Horn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York1970s chairs by Charles Pollock for Knoll surround the studio’s conference table. Portraits from Scott’s book Fragile Face Lay Flat are displayed on the wall at left. Shelving build-out by Dan Birch Interiors; Blick International clock; vintage Jonisk globe lamp by Carl Öjerstam for Ikea. ART: Venetia Scott. © Bjørn Wiinblad.Scott fell in love with it on sight as a home for her and Lola, her then seven-year-old daughter (with former partner Juergen Teller). Also with how it came ready-made with a space for her to work on stories and plan collections—she was designing for the Marc by Marc Jacobs line at the time—and to get into building her sets. “I came here against everybody’s advice,” she says with a laugh. “Because the whole thing has a great flow to it. It was just me and Lola, and I wanted it to be a fun place to be. It felt free and liberating.”The framed photo of Scott is by Juergen Teller. ART: Juergen Teller / Contemporary Fine Arts.Images from Scott’s studio Straight ahead from the entrance is her studio, where she’s compiling a cover story for British Vogue, working at a desk surrounded by red crackled leather Charles Pollock for Knoll swivel chairs. (“I think they came from eBay, from America,” she says.) Something Mad Men–era about this seating arrangement holds a sweet irony in a space entirely devoted to the gaze of a woman looking at other women and girls—and to all of them looking straight back at her. There’s a whole wall of them, portraits cropped in from Scott’s shoots, models turned back into people again by her—all taken from her 2019 exhibition and book Fragile Face Lay Flat. “I’m always saying ‘Eyes to camera,’ ” she notes.In the studio Stacks of British Vogue on the studio shelves Scott with model Laura Tibasosa in the studio ART: Venetia ScottHer meticulously researched print-outs are pinned to eight-by-four-foot magnetic boards propped against one wall. A British Vogue veteran, Scott came up under editor-in-chief Beatrix Miller and the legendary fashion editor Grace Coddington, then made her name as a stylist in ’90s London. Yet she works upside-down from most fashion editors: She starts with the surroundings, which are the main influence on how the clothes are chosen, although—unlike most photographers—she often sources the fashion too, as well as casting her characters. “Locations are a massive part of my story-building, because I try and knit together who the person is, and where they would be. It’s almost the first thing for me. If I know the colors of the place—then I can mix the colors of the clothes or textures of them into it.” Gesturing to another wall, she remarks, “This side of the studio is for set builds. We create different rooms for shoots. We’ll add flooring, curtains, wallpaper, wall lights, skirting boards, furniture, and all the rest of it. I’ve shot lots of magazine stories in here.”An overhead view of the residence’s light-filled main level, which is separated into live-work zones. Roofed in a greenhouse-like configuration of steel beams and glass panels, the late-19th-century building originally served as a postal sorting office. ART: Venetia Scott. © Bjørn Wiinblad.Scott took her own portrait for AD. She’s upstairs, her skirt fanned out as she sits in the corner of the B&B Italia sofa, which she had re-covered in a sandy-gold fabric with matching tiger-striped cushions. Eyes to camera, she radiates a grown-up, Peggy Guggenheim–ish glamour in a vivid pink splash of a Zandra Rhodes dress. “Yes, it’s from the ’70s,” she admits, smiling. “I love it so much that I’m always hiring it from this person who has a vintage store, but they won’t ever sell it to me!”The kitchen is outfitted in custom green cabinetry with gold trim by Arclinea. Colorful vintage Murano glass pendant lights by Carlo Nason hang in the foreground. At right, a 1970s Pamela pendant by Ettore Arcelli for Tronconi hangs above a Saarinen dining table by Knoll surrounded with S33 Cognac chairs by Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer. The 1970s wall hanging is by Ewald Kröner. ART: Ewald KrönerThe bespoke Arclinea kitchen, a recent update, provides a focus for entertaining. The kitchen’s plastic pears were found at a Paris market. Barcelona pendant lamp by Bent Karlby; piano by Bentley. ART: © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, ParisJulio Le Parc’s “La Longue Marche” screen prints line a wall of the dining room, where a pair of Barcelona Pendants by Bent Karlby hang above an A.J. Iversen table surrounded by Niels O. Møller chairs. The 1970s articulated wood floor lamp is by David Pigeon, and the 1950s sideboard is by Arne Vodder. ART: © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, ParisScott protests that she never consciously channels the 1970s in her pictures, but she can’t help it. “I feel like I often go back to that time. Which is weird, because I was only seven.” Her father was a British military attaché in Iran and France when she was growing up, and she was always at boarding school. It’s not difficult to see her visual taste as the adult reaction of a girl who once had zero autonomy over her environment. “We weren’t allowed to have anything in our rooms except a poster or two. I remember my parents gave me an Iranian rug. They said I could always sit on it and fly home. Which of course, you couldn’t.”The primary bedroom features walls covered in grass cloth by Phillip Jeffries, curtains of a Zinc Textile corduroy; the moon painting is by Piers Jackson. ART: Piers Jackson / Kristy Stubbs Gallery, DallasA 1970s Italian mirror in the primary bedroom A transparent sliding door reveals the primary closet. Cheerful vintage yellow fixtures in the primary bath That instinct for making a home from whatever’s at hand she traces to her mother. “We were always on the move. So mum would put things together very quickly, and I think I did the same here, to give Lola a home.” For what she calls “phase one” of the decorating process, “I whizzed around on this crazy shopping spree at Alfie’s Antique Market and Themes & Variations,” she recalls. And many of those first acquisitions—Danish and Italian midcentury furniture, colorful Murano glass, plastic pears lugged back on the Eurostar from Paris—have stood the test of time. “I did all that quickly, then just left it for 20 years.”The guest bath is clad in aqua tile. In the guest room, the lamp and nightstand are both from Vincenzo Caffarella. The walls are covered in grass cloth by Phillip Jeffries. Then, after lockdown, “when there wasn’t much work, I did phase two, which was removing a divider and opening up the area right to the back.” That’s when her custom Arclinea kitchen went in, in a green slightly different from the walls, with a gold trim, and outfitted with a Wolf oven. “I’m not a cook, but I love it when people come over and all of this space seems to work beautifully.”Downstairs is another story: the surprise of bedrooms without much light. “This is my den,” she says of her leopard-spot-carpeted bedroom, upon which floats a huge sleigh bed from Simon Horn. “I decided to embrace the no-light situation with these heavy corduroy curtains.” Over her bed is an Alfred Wallis painting of a trawler on a rough sea; on her nightstand is a piece of gold-leaf concave geometric moon-like art by Piers Jackson. Despite the lack of light, it seems to glow. “I love it. I think it speaks to me more than almost anything I have.”In the entry hall, a Gucci coat hangs on a 1970s Gronda mirror coatrack by Luciano Bertoncini for Elco. Then behind the wall where her photo studio work carries on, there’s what just might have been the absolute clincher for a woman who’s spent half her life in fashion: a transparent sliding door that rolls back to reveal a hanging wardrobe 16 feet long. “I mean, look. This was already here,” she exclaims. “It just couldn’t be bettered."This story appears in the September issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.Not a subscriber? 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