We visit CLUBMERA co-founder Amy Rollings at her East London home, where objects come with stories, Rollo the dog has claimed the best seat in the house, and beautiful things and pet life happily coexist.
A home full of stories
There are interiors that feel designed, and interiors that feel collected. Amy Rollings’ East London home achieves both.
We arrive on a bright early afternoon when the house is flooded with light.
The ceilings are high, the walls are white, there’s concrete underfoot and a welcoming sense of openness runs throughout. Amy tells us the house is regularly used for shoots, sometimes four or five a month. It doesn’t take long to understand why people want to photograph it. Rollo, her five-year-old dog, has even found himself cast in a few of them.
The house was renovated by Amy and her husband Richard, an architect and founder of Studio Tuesday. They didn’t make huge structural changes, but almost everything else has their hand in it: the kitchen island and units were made for the space, doors came off, the lighting changed and, over time, they filled it with things they love.
Thinking about spaces and objects is central to Richard’s work, and every object in their home feels perfectly curated and complementary.
“We like collecting things from everywhere we go. I’ll always know where everything’s from. The pieces come with a story.”
On a trip to Montpellier this summer, that meant waiting outside an antiques shop for two hours after spotting an old lamp and a green vase they couldn’t leave behind.
Seeking out local antiques markets has become of a ritual when they travel, particularly in Frances.
“When we love things, we love things.”
You can see that around the house. Objects are reminders of places, trips and moments, assembled gradually into a home that means something to the people living in it.
And then there’s Rollo
Rollo, meanwhile, has had to work around the interiors rather than the other way around.
“Have you seen this house? There’s nothing we’ve designed for a dog around here,”
Amy laughs.
She points to an expensive cream chair that Rollo immediately adopted when they bought it. They had it cleaned again and again, but after switching it to a different corner of the room, he suddenly stopped choosing to sit in that chair. They realised he hadn’t been particularly attached to the chair. He just wanted to sit near them.
Since then he’s earmarked a few other spots as his own, his areas include a new place on the sofa; in winter, there’s a bed beside the radiator in Amy and Richard’s room; in summer, he stretches out on the original concrete floor when the house gets hot. Most nights, though, he ends up on their bed.
By around nine, he often takes himself there.
“We’ll be watching something and he’ll just be like, ‘I’ve had enough.’ He’ll walk into the bedroom, jump onto the bed and he’s done.”
The same applies when Amy and Richard have friends over for dinner, which they often do. At some point Rollo simply leaves everyone to it.
He is less independent in the morning. Rollo has learnt that Amy putting on jeans on trousers usually means a walk and will sit beside her waiting to see whether he has read the signs correctly. Their walks take them towards Victoria Park, along the canal or through the nearby cemetery, which Amy says feels completely removed from London once you’re inside.
From fashion to founder
Walking him has become more important since Amy left the corporate world to build CLUBMERA.
The idea for the drinks brand came while she and Richard were renovating the house. Amy had spent 20 years working in fashion and knew she wanted to buildsomething of her own, just not another fashion brand.
She and her co-founder Erin kept coming back to what was missing when they went out. They both drink alcohol, but neither wanted the alternative to always be something sugary or that felt completely separate from the occasion.
“We’re alcohol agnostic as a brand. This isn’t about us preaching sobriety. It’s about having a choice that isn’t a compromise.”
Amy laughs that she would like to say they did endless market research before starting.
They didn’t.
“We just went for it.”
A year later, CLUBMERA has launched at the BRIT Awards, sold its first 3,000 bottles and completed its first full-scale production.
The new working day
Running it has also changed Amy’s days. After years in big teams, she found working alone from home surprisingly isolating. She missed people, including the tiny interactions you don’t think about until they disappear.
So now she gets out. She works from co-working spaces, fills her days with meetings and walks over to Richard’s studio in Hackney Wick. Rollo comes along when he can. He has already attended sales meetings.
There are limits to his enthusiasm for leaving the house, though. Rain is one. Rollo hates water and will stubbornly refuse a walk if the weather isn’t to his liking.
Pubs are another matter.
Rollo would rather be at the pub
“Rollo loves a pub.”
He has been going with Amy and Richard since he was a puppy and now stops at pub doors as if entering is simply part of the walk. There are certain ones where Amy has to physically persuade him to carry on.
Which seems fitting for a dog who has grown up in a house that is often full of people. Although, preferably, not much past nine.
And maybe that is the more interesting version of a dog-friendly home.
Not a house designed around a dog, but a house designed around the people who live there, with enough room for a dog to gradually write himself into it.