Fashion and accessory designer Basia Zarzycka lives in a world of fantasy. Entering her home, up the white-painted steps guarded by clipped bay trees and through the glossy black-painted front door, you leave regulated, humdrum life far behind. The lady herself greets you in a floor-length gown and matching coat with a waspish concocation of vivid pink feathers in her hair. She leads you through the treasures of her fourstorey home in stately progression, before sweeping up an armful of tiny terrier dogs and returning to her nearby studio where she makes the delicate and ornate gowns, shoes, bags, and hats that bear her individual style.

The sitting room of the home that Zarzycka shares with Graham Wilson, her partner and business partner, is from a time gone by. It feels as though it is the dressing room of some theatrical Victorian diva.

In the front of the long narrow room, huge bouquets and towering styled arrangements of flowers are displayed. A velvet-covered sofa and ornately carved dark wood chair are arranged as if waiting for suitors to take their places. A decoupage screen is folded back to reveal the rest of the salon, furnished with a pair of giltembellished chairs with yellow silk upholstery. Two calico dressmaker’s mannequins, draped in fur-trimmed voile wraps, stand by, and another sofa, almost invisible beneath layers of velvet, silk and bejeweled cushions, could be where the diva herself would recline after an exhausting performance. All that is missing is the perfume of face powder and the scent of a cigar.

Red-carpeted stairs lead down to a halflanding and a cloakroom, and still further to the basement kitchen and a snug sitting area. The back door that opens to a side alley is disguised beneath a drape of red velvet. One of the few concessions to contemporary living, a wide-screen television, is discreetly positioned in on e corner opposite a two-sear sofa, covered with embossed velvet throw.

As if the rooms upstairs were not crowded enough with treasures, the kitchen dresser and half of the dining table are covered with even more things. There are old wig and hat stands supporting antique caps and floral hats, small carved wood and china figures are almost lost in forest of velvet strawberries, silk forget-me-nots and faded stain roses. Bits of diamante jewellery lie beside paste tiaras, a silver-backed hairbrush and carved and painted puppet heads, butterflies, shoes buckles and Victorian handbag clips are as much as the eye can register in one viewing. “I am always collecting,” Zarzycka say, “God help me when I am 80! But I do know where most things are and I am constantly subtracting and adding, especially after trips abroad where I visit markets and antique shops. It is part of my Polish upbringing, we love embellishment, and from the time when I studied as Goldsmith College I have loved to mix things together, for example ribbon and gold work, beads and flowers”

From the entrance hall the stairs rise to another half-landing with a dark wood and white bathroom, filled with crisply pressed antique lace and starched broderie anglaise dressing gowns and linens and generously sized perfume bottles.

On the next level there are two bedrooms. The main one is decorated in ivory and eau de nil. A coronet hangs like a halo above the bed the curtains are generously swagged and ruched under a double pelmet. On a cream damask chaise, as well as hand-sewn and decorated court shoes made by Zarzycka. Another calico mannequin is swathed in lace, and on top rests a picture hat, with a large bow and embellishments.

The second bedroom is in pink and ivory, with just a touch of green. The bedhead is crowned by a cascade of bow-tied curtains and a swagged coronet. Pillows are lost beneath piles of floral and embroidered cushions and two neck pillows seem to dam the sea of silk from spilling further down the bed. A large gold-framed mirror reflects the daylight that sneaks in round the furls or the window curtains and beneath the scalloped pelmet above. A delicate clear and pink glass chandelier hangs from a plaster rose.

On the top floor there are two more smaller bedrooms and long landing window, which fills the cream hallways with light. Even the wallpaper in these areas is richly embossed and decorative; as in Zarzycka’s work, nothing is understated.

The gowns that she creates take about six months to complete. The dresses are dispatched on scented padded hangers and in boxes filled with scented tissue paper. She says that her customers are never minimalists, they are people who don’t follow fashion trends but dress to suit themselves.

At her new, more spacious shop in Sloane Street there is a collection of garments for customers to view, and about 700 tiaras, feathers fans, flowers, rings, shoes, bags and hats to choose from. If she doesn’t have just it at home or in her treasure trove at her studio.