English-born Denise Portmans ditched a career in fashion to take a punt on an interiors pop-up selling Moroccan rugs with her daughter, artist Sara Marlowe Hall, in 2014. A shop, gallery, interior design service and two holiday homes later, it’s fair to say their bet paid off. Here, from her early 20th-century home in Venice, L.A., Portmans reflects on her aesthetic; the currency that comes with being European in the US and why, for her, home is about feeling comfortable above all else.

Denise: “In any house there should be a stack of books, postcards, art prints, posters… anything that shows you’re alive and living, and that you actually want to be there!

“It’s funny how you are always going back to what you know. I’m English, and I’ve ended up living in one of the oldest houses in L.A. with a pretty garden and a lawn. I think there’s something familiar and comforting about it for me in a city that’s known for its modernist architecture.

“This house dates from 1908 – really old for L.A. – and was built in the craftsman style, which started popping up when Venice was being built as a replica of the real Venice, with man-made canals and arched bridges.

“I love the house a lot. It’s spacious, and every room lends itself to a different feeling or a mood. The lighting in the afternoon is incredible, and I have to have the Japanese shutters that play with the light because you need some kind of protection from the sun here – it’s quite harsh. It comes through the shutters and casts all these lovely shadows everywhere – it’s really, really beautiful.

“I think when you walk into anybody’s house the first thing that needs to happen is you need to feel like you’re at home and comfortable. It’s really easy to go and buy a load of high-end pieces of furniture, put them in an empty space and kind of go, ‘Here you go.’ But you need to be able to relax in a house and feel like you could stay there for an indefinite amount of time, and totally morph into it.

“What I try to do in any house that I am decorating is make the people feel like they have a sense of things from different places that have come together, that work together in the space, so that it’s not all uniform mid-century, not all modern, not all antique… not all anything. I think it’s really important to mix pieces up so that you have a sense of layering, because life is mixed up and it’s not all just one colour or one thing.

“But it’s also important to me to support contemporary artists, sculptors and ceramicists who are doing incredible work right now. My advice would be to mix old and new, make it feel comfortable and a place you feel safe and secure.

“I moved to the US in 1986, during the whole Thatcher time back home. I was a fashion stylist first in New York and then here, and I just ended up staying. It was around the time my mum passed away that I realised I didn’t want to do fashion anymore. She was a living, breathing artist, a painter, and dedicated her whole life to it, so was a huge advocate for doing what you love and loving what you do.

“It’s really because of her that I stopped styling and started a little pop-up. I sold vintage Moroccan rugs, which I love and collect, and photography and art. I filled the space up, and everything sold. I just thought, ‘Hang on a minute.’

“So, I went to Morocco with my daughter and we bought a ton of rugs, which are more like art pieces translated into a carpet. We brought them back here, and then started incorporating a mix of vintage ceramics and mid-century furniture, and, more recently, contemporary arts – photography, sculpture, and ceramics – sourced from Japan to Paris.

“Then that evolved into having a gallery, which is next door to the shop, and we started doing interior projects too. Then the opportunity to buy a house in the desert came up and we made Merchant House. You can stay there and then purchase anything that’s in the house at the shop. So, it’s a living, breathing house/gallery, with a mixture of things that I’ve collected and work from artists we represent.

“People ask me to define my aesthetic but it’s so difficult because I don’t consciously decide things, I just do it. It’s not a planned or thought-out thing, it’s really more visceral – something that I fall in love with, maybe, and try and incorporate into a space I’m working on.

“But I’m definitely drawn to raw and more imperfect pieces, in art, sculpture and photography. I love Modigliani, for example, and those modern artists, with their necks all bent out of shape and their faces kind of warped. And I’m drawn to vintage pieces because I think they just scream personality and character. It has a life, a story, and it’s great to recycle and use that in modern-day houses.

“America had its heyday for architecture and craft in the 1970s, and that’s really prevalent here. You’ve got J.B. Blunk, Georgia O’Keeffe and her influence, and you’ve got a lot of Japanese ceramics and artists that migrated over here.

“Then, aside from the classic American movement, mid-century furniture is primarily Swedish, but you also get some domestic stuff. But you can get anything here, and there’s an abundant supply of stock; I don’t have to go to Europe.

“Normal life in LA is pretty busy for me. I get up, I go to the store, I have appointments, I’ll go and look at people’s houses. Our clients are very lenient, and they’ll basically just hand over their homes to us and say, ‘Okay, just do your thing.’

“I think what they like about it is that it’s me and my daughter and that we are European – that’s very attractive to a lot of people out here. It’s about culture and upbringing, which is so subliminal and subconscious you don’t even know that you’re taking in museums, a historic building, a French café, or whatever it is when you’re growing up.

“It’s so ingrained and then if you come to America, you bring that with you, where it doesn’t exist in the same way. So, you’re bringing them something that is very attractive, and I attribute a large amount of our success to that.

“But I think because we have the shop as a front, people can see what we’re about. And now there’s Instagram you don’t have to sell yourself in a way that you used to in the past. People can look at my feed like a portfolio, and it’s pretty clear what my style is.

“Working with my daughter is like a dream come true. I’m a single mother and I brought her up on my own. first here and then we moved back to London, where she studied for 10 years. I had a very close relationship with my mum, but I think I had a lot of guilt because I was always here, and she was there. We got to see each other, but once a year is never really enough, is it? So, I think I made up for it with Sara. We’re really good friends and we totally understand each other’s taste, which makes work very easy.

“In the last five to 10 years L.A. has attracted a lot of Europeans, and it makes me wonder, why? I think it’s just the California dream: the ocean, the mountains, the desert and the weather.

“The quality of life here is pretty easy. I like driving up the coast, which is stunningly beautiful, to Malibu, or I’ll go and spend a few days at the house in the desert – that’s like being transported to a different world and is complete escapism.

“And then the beach is five minutes down the road from me, so I’ll go and sit on the beach and read my book. Or at least I do in normal times. I’ve basically spent the last four months between the desert and this house in quarantine.

“It’s really given me time to spend quality time at home, which I don’t often get to do. We’re always waking up, rushing off and doing things. So, it’s been lovely to just sit still and enjoy my house. I’ve got a projector and I watch movies in the garden – you just make your own little world up, I suppose.

“I grapple with staying here every day. I’m constantly thinking, ‘What am I doing here? Why am I here?’. I don’t know what the answer is. I think I’ve just become comfortable with my lifestyle. I now have a business, a dog, a car, and my daughter’s living here… my life’s here.

“I think about moving back to England all the time, but I’ve done it twice in my life and I’ve always ended up back here. I think there’s just something about the easy living that just keeps you here. But I’m torn because culturally I feel a bit lost here. I don’t want to die in LA, let’s just put it that way. I don’t want to be old in L.A. either; it’s a young person’s town.

“At the moment I’m dreaming of a grey, rainy day in London. I’m just thinking, ‘Give it to me, I’ll take it any time.’ It’s so hot here – 35 degrees is too hot to enjoy, not that I should be complaining!”