Upmarket designer opens flagship store... in a garage

Furniture and interior designer Timothy Oulton is setting up shop in the ultimate garage conversion this September. The new flagship store for his eponymous business is to be in the Bluebird Garage in Chelsea, a celebrated Art Deco building famously linked to record-breaking racing driver Sir Malcolm Campbell.

Now Grade II listed, the garage was built in 1923 and was the biggest of its kind in Europe, with room for 300 cars in the garage. It even included a lounge for chauffeurs. Its days of car repair long behind it, the Bluebird was turned into a restaurant and retail space by design guru Sir Terence Conran’s Conran Group in 1997.

Timothy Oulton has been creating luxury furniture since the 1990s, when he took over his dad’s antiques business. He has 40 galleries round the world, including in Harrods and Heal’s.

He specialises in pieces with a tale to tell, such as the Aviator Tomcat, an armchair modelled on the cockpit seat of an F14 Tomcat fighter jet; handcrafted replicas of regimental drums, used to make unusual side tables or shelving; and upmarket upcycled items, like the Axel table which has a top made from wood taken from decommissioned Chinese fishing junks.