Picture perfect — Ketsuda

Originally published in LIVING Magazine Kelvin & Clyde (see PDF)

When it comes to style and image, Nick Haddow knows the score.

He’s been a fashion and portrait photographer for the past 25 years, working for the likes of Vogue, W magazine and Harper’s Bazaar. His portfolio is a roll call of high profile stars such as Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightley and Diana Ross, not to mention globally familiar faces like Bill Clinton.

It’s not uncommon for them to swap numbers afterwards – Emma Thompson is an old pal.

“It’s just the best neighbourhood in Glasgow, I love it because it’s so spacious. The light’s amazing. It’s the
most beautiful architecture.”

It’s a star-studded list for the Glasgow native. Just don’t make a fuss about it. “I have to tell you, and you can quote me on this: I don’t think glamour exists,” Nick says. “I think it’s people from the outside looking in.”

He’s quick to downplay any notions of grandeur. The jet set photo shoots in glamorous locales, for instance, are a study in getting sunburnt while trying to get good shots. “It’s a business,” he explains. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but my favourite thing is to be at home in Scotland with my old friends rather than at those parties.”

Really?

“Yeah, completely. That’s why I still have a house in Scotland.” Raised in Newton Mearns, as a little boy he’d ask his parents why they didn’t live in Park Circus. Not coincidentally, Nick’s base in Scotland for the last 15 years has been a flat within a magnificent Victorian townhouse on Park Circus’s attractive crescent.

Designed by Charles Wilson in the mid-19th Century, there has been a resurgence in townhouses being converted from offices to residences since Nick acquired the property.

“It’s just the best neighbourhood in Glasgow, I think,” he enthuses. “I love it because it’s so spacious. The light’s amazing. It’s the most beautiful architecture. You feel that you’re in the countryside after five o’clock and at the weekend because it’s so quiet, and yet it’s a three minute walk to the West End and a five minute walk to the city centre.”

His three bedroom, three bathroom 2,200 square metre flat sprawls across two floors. Its massive rooms and equally oversized windows take in views over the whole of Glasgow and the park at the centre of the area.

After buying it from a developer, Nick first refurbished it from top to bottom with a better eye for design – the floors were stripped, kitchen remodeled, fireplace changed, lighting upgraded. “I love interiors,” Nick says. “If I wasn’t a photographer, I’d probably be an interior designer.”

Despite the flat’s proportions, Nick has decorated it to be comfortable and unfussy. His self-described style is cosy and eclectic. Aside from a few pieces from Designworks in Glasgow, he sourced all the décor from antiques shops and fairs in Oxfordshire and London, along with items collected abroad.

It’s a spectacular space designed with love and imbued with a luxurious yet cosy feel throughout. The drawing room is fitted with vast, plush sofas, sizable artworks, lofty mirrors and a cinema surround-sound system hidden from sight.

The super-kingsize beds are swathed in Egyptian cotton from The White Company. Sisley, the luxury French skincare brand for which he is an ambassador, can be found on his bathroom shelf. Moreover, the flat is on the doorstep of Kelvingrove Park, an oasis in the centre of Glasgow.

“The great thing about travelling and being spoiled and staying in lovely places is that you see beautiful homes and beautiful hotels. You just retain it and think, ‘Oh I like that . . .’ and you might implement it when you’re putting the house together.”

Now based mainly in Notting Hill, Nick often returns to Glasgow. He went to New York in 1992 after an unfulfilling turn as a menswear buyer, a job he’d found to be like a “glorified accountant”. His mother encouraged him to take time off to travel.

Although he’d been creative and interested in interiors from a young age, his initiation to photography was serendipitous.

“I just didn’t know which way to put my creativity and, luckily, photography fell on to my lap,” he recalls.

He had been living with a hairdresser in New York who called him one morning and asked him to fill in on a shoot where a photographer’s assistant hadn’t shown up. He had never done anything like it before.

“That day I thought, ‘I love this. This is what I want to do’. From that day forward that’s what I did.”

After assisting other photographers, Nick’s big break came when a friend shared his reportage-style black and white photos from a party with models with an editor at W, the pre-eminent American fashion magazine. He was travelling in India at the time, but was soon hired as a staff photographer on his return to New York.

“You can have all the windows full open with no noise. All you can hear is the rustling of the trees. It’s just beautiful.”

“One day I was sent off to shoot Kate Winslet, who was brand new. I was sent to her hotel and I photographed her and she got in the bath but kept her socks on! “Instantly I got this access that I would never have got, so it was luck. Right place, right time. It just continued after that. Touch wood.

Nick splits his time between London, Glasgow and trips abroad for work. He’s a regular at neighbourhood favourites, such as Stravaigin and The Finnieston, plus The Cross Keys 1703 in Kippen. He enjoys showing off Glasgow’s charms to first time visitors.

“If you drive from Kippen into the West End up Great Western Road, and all those mansions and villas, people are really blown away by the grandeur and the beauty of the buildings.”

In terms of interiors or photo shoot locations (his favourites include Lisbon, Mumbai and Harbour Bay in Jamaica), Nick often uses light as a reference point. It’s what makes summer in the city hard to beat.

“I just think Glasgow comes alive in the sun in the summer,” he says.

“The light is incredible. “After five o’clock, Park Circus is like a ghost town. You can have all the windows full open with no noise.

“All you can hear is the rustling of the trees. It’s just beautiful.”