‘I think I am a bit of a chameleon,’ says Benni Frowein, CEO of the Europe and Middle East arm of American heritage fabric house F Schumacher & Co. ‘I’ve lived in different places and been exposed to a lot; I can adapt.’ In a previous life, he was a (sometimes literally) high-flying consultant, working in the banking, mining and luxury automotive industries, with stints in China, South Africa and Brazil.
Though the experience was hugely formative – Benni loved exploring new cultures and the countries he lived in – it was also gruelling. For the best part of a decade, he worked 90-hour weeks and spent much of that on long-haul flights. A dramatic pivot came in 2015, when he set himself up in property development, taking on interior and landscape design projects in Europe from a base in Germany. A year later, however, he was contacted by a former colleague, who had taken up the reins at Schumacher and asked Benni to help transform its fortunes. It turned out to be the perfect job, in which he could combine his business experience with a growing appreciation of design and decoration. He spent five years in New York as president of Schumacher, then in 2021 he moved to London to take on his current role.
So, yes, like a chameleon, he is adept at blending in with and adapting to his environment. But from the look of his apartment in Chelsea, he is also good at changing his environment to suit his needs. It was on a dark and ugly lockdown-era day in January 2021 that he originally visited this flat, which takes up the first floor of a substantial end-of-terrace house built in the late 19th century. Despite its low ceilings, poky rooms and odd corridors, Benni could see the flat was a space he could reinvent, which he did over a six-month period.
He had continued developing properties on the side, often helping friends and family members with their homes, so he felt more than equipped to take on the design and project management of his own. Benni drew up plans for not only a new layout, but also every bit of joinery (there is a huge amount of built-in storage). ‘I was on site at 7am every day to discuss problems or solutions with the contractors, so I could make decisions quickly, allowing them to get on with their work.’
Floors were laid, walls came down and tons of rubble were removed. Mysterious pipes were discovered and gingerly discarded. (‘We still don’t know what some were for,’ Benni admits). Every cornice and architrave was replaced, doorways straightened and false ceilings taken down. The location of bedrooms and rooms for living were flipped to create an elegant new layout.