Alexandra Champalimaud demurs at calling herself a citizen of the world, but given her international upbringing and a career spent decorating top hotels from Boston to Beijing, the term seems apt. The New York-based interior designer was born in Lisbon to a Portuguese mother and an English father. After living in the Swiss Alps for a time, she went to French and British schools in Lisbon before attending boarding school in England. “My early years were cultured and inspiring,” Champalimaud says. “And Lisbon was a marvelous place to grow up; it has incredible depth and history.” After earning a degree in the decorative arts from that city’s prestigious Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva Foundation, she landed a position at an atelier of one of her professors and worked with him on her first hotel, in the Algarve. At eighteen she left that job to be with her new husband, who was serving in the Portuguese army in Mozambique, where the couple remained for a year and a half. “We lived in a house abandoned by cotton farmers, but I turned it into something charming” she says.
Later, to escape the upheaval of the 1974 revolution in Portugal, Champalimaud, her husband and their young son moved to Montreal, where she had a second son shortly after their arrival. Talented and ambitious, she was so successful as a junior interior designer at a leading firm there that just four years later, she hung out her own shingle. Soon she counted among her clients the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau and the Château Frontenac and Manoir Richelieu hotels. “I create livable, sexy spaces that are classical with an edge and have a mischievous side,” says Champalimaud, who favors such materials as nickel, black granite and exotic woods. In 1992, by then divorced, Champalimaud moved her company to New York, where she married an American. She refurbished the city’s storied Algonquin Hotel, in Midtown, and designed several suites at the Carlyle. Among her proudest achievements are the “sophisticated and modern” lobby, lounges and guest rooms she fashioned for the Berkeley, in London, most notably the Caramel Room, one of the chicest spots in town for afternoon tea. Her latest projects include a glamorous overhaul of three penthouse suites at London’s Dorchester, collaborating on the transformation of Boston’s Charles Street Jail into the new Liberty Hotel and a complete renovation of the St. Regis in Beijing, just in time for the Olympic Games in the summer of 2008. For hospitality-industry insiders around the globe, her name is synonymous with style.
How often do you travel these days?
Five months a year for work, more if I include leisure travel.
What kind of luggage do you take along?
Ninety-nine percent of the time, I use a carry-on bag, most often my black Swiss Army trolley, because it’s not too important looking, packs easily and is as strong as nails.
Any rituals when flying?
I inhale peppermint and eucalyptus oils to help clear my lungs of the mess in the air, and I wrap a pashmina around my head to sleep. I also drink lots of water and continually put cream on my face. I like the Super Serum, Eye Complex and Youth Complex from IS Clinical.
What are some memorable trips from your childhood?
When I was eleven years old, my mother and I drove through Portugal, Spain and France to England. I was her navigator, and off we went in her Jaguar, just the two of us. It was a glorious trip. We did a lot of singing, we stayed in incredible hotels — like the Pousada dos Lóios, in Evora, Portugal, and the Ritz in Madrid — and stopped at several châteaus in the Loire Valley. She taught me how to see the magic in everything.
Tell us about some wild excursions you’ve made.
When my sons were eighteen and twelve, we went on a two-week trip up the Amazon. I took my nephews, too, so there were five of us paddling along in canoes, led by two Indian guides. We saw crocodiles and slept in hammocks hung from trees. My African trips have also been adventurous.
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