The goddess of small things

For Rita Konig, interior design isn't only about coherence and comfort: it should be a celebration of stuff. Giles Kime charts her transatlantic career

- Giles Kime

PEOPLE might take a dim view of journalism, but it has precipitated some pretty stellar careers in politics (Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove), fiction (Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and Helen Fielding) and in business, notably Natalie Massenet, who launched Net-a-Porter, and Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company. 'You have to do your research and work to a deadline,' says Rita Konig, whose early career included stints on The Telegraph Magazine, The Sunday Times, British Vogue and Conde Nast's interiors magazine, Domino, for which she travelled the length and breadth of the US.

Alongside Ilse Crawford, who formerly edited Elle Decoration, and Faye Toogood, who began her career on The World of Interiors, working on magazines prepared her for a career in the wider world of design. Other formative influences also paved the way, however, notably that of her mother (the interior designer Nina Campbell), who was a serial mover, making beautiful homes in a succession of apartments and houses in Kensington and Chelsea. 'I grew up loving the smell of wet paint,' Miss Konig recalls.

Working in America was a significant influence, particularly its culture, which she finds 'infectiously upbeat and collaborative'. Almost a decade based in Manhattan writing for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and US Vogue opened numerous doors, including that of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who invited her to decorate his restaurant, The Waverley Inn, each Christmas. Soon, she was juggling a career as a journalist and a designer.