Kamini Ezralow arrived in London in the dead of winter at the age of five

Kamini Ezralow, 38, is managing director of Intarya, a London-based interior design company whose current projects include a palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a yacht in the Netherlands, penthouses in Dubai and London and a house in Dublin, Ireland. Born in South Africa, she has lived in India, Hong Kong, France, the US and is now based in London.

I was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where my family ran an import-export business. We’re a fifth generation South African family but, in the days of apartheid rule, those were very different times and my parents took the opportunity to relocate to London when I was five. We arrived in the city in the dead of winter and stayed a year. London made a big impression on me – particularly the architecture. I have very clear memories of being on a rooftop playground and looking out over the city. But it was a difficult move to a new environment for the family so we went to Bombay, where my younger brother and I stayed with my aunt and extended family members while my parents travelled to the US looking for a place for us to settle as a family.

It was in Bombay that I started traditional Indian dancing – bharat natyam. I studied with a well-known Indian teacher and loved the music and dancing. As a shy child it was a good way of expressing myself. But we only stayed for a few months in Bombay because my parents returned from the US via Hong Kong, which they immediately loved and indeed is where they still live now. So, at the age of seven, I moved to a fifth-floor apartment of a 20-storey building in Hong Kong, attended the German Swiss International school and took up classical ballet.

The sheer dynamism of Hong Kong made a great impression on me. It is an incredible place to learn a work ethic because business is so important, as is family life, which creates a great balance between western and Asian lifestyles. My parents really succeeded in taking us away from segregation to an interesting environment where we could be who we were.

After I left school I took a year out. I spent it partly as an intern with an agent importing and distributing design products in Hong Kong and partly in Paris going to museums and looking at the architecture.I then went to university in London, where I studied French and German languages and European studies. It was a four-year course and I spent my third year in Tours, France, really immersing myself in the French language, which I found an amazing experience.

I returned to Hong Kong after graduating because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. At the time my mother had a home furnishings store in Hong Kong and we went on a buying trip together in Rajasthan, India. I was so inspired by the landscape, the colours and visiting little villages to meet unbelievably gifted craftsmen. Up to that point my mother had only sold home accessories, not textiles, so she asked me to visit a family-run mill in Delhi to pick out some fabrics for the shop even though I had no formal design training. While I was there the owner asked me if I was a designer because she thought I had a very good eye for colour and pattern. When I said that I wasn’t she suggested I should consider interior design as a career.

That experience in India inspired me so much that I decided to enrol for a post-graduate diploma on the interior architecture course at the Inchbald School of Design in London. I graduated in 1996 and, after gaining work experience in London with one of the professors, I returned to Hong Kong and joined the interiors department of an architectural practice, where I learned a lot about space planning as we worked on hotel lobbies, clubs and public spaces. A year later I set up my own company working with private clients on residential projects. This showed me a different side to Hong Kong as I often needed to find specialist craftsmen such as the ironmonger who made me a screen I’d designed with a complex nautilus shell pattern for an Aids charity auction.

I was still living with my parents when I met my husband, Orrin, a doctor of Chinese medicine, who was working at a holistic practice in Hong Kong. He is originally from Los Angeles but had studied and lived in Shanghai and Japan. However, he wanted to return home to see his elderly parents so we decided to start a new life together there.

Of all the places I’d moved to Los Angeles was the biggest culture shock and initially I found it a difficult place to live because it is so Hollywood-driven. I was amazed at the magnitude of the city and disliked spending such a lot of time alone in the car driving to see clients. However, I was fortunate to work with old Hollywood stars from the 1950s and 1960s – jobs which came to me by word-of-mouth – and once you get into the groove it is an amazing place and has a lot to offer. What I particularly like about Los Angeles is the “can do” attitude. People aren’t blinkered about what’s possible. For example, when I was designing a Japanese space for an acupuncture clinic I needed someone to make a traditional tatami floor-covering on a wooden frame. I approached a carpenter who worked on studio film-sets and he did a brilliant job within a very short deadline.

I spent seven years in Los Angeles and really only moved again because I met a director of Northacre, a London-based property developer, at a friend’s wedding in London. He was looking for someone to head up the interiors division and create show apartments. At that stage they hadn’t started to work internationally and I felt I could develop this aspect. It seemed a great opportunity as there was a lot of synergy between my approach and theirs so in December 2005 I relocated to London with my husband, who set up his own medical practice in the city.

London felt much busier and more international than when I’d lived there as a student. I felt more conscious that people use it as a stepping stone to Europe. It wasn’t a difficult move as I’ve always found London endlessly inspiring and most of my friends are here. Today 90 per cent of our clients are non-Northacre – although Intarya is still involved in all of Northacre’s projects – and we’ve just launched a division called Life on Board. I travel abroad several days a month as we’ve recently been working on a yacht in Holland and have two projects in the Middle East. I feel indebted to the experience of living in so many places because it has taught me to be respectful of a culture and still get the job done, which is challenging for a woman in Middle Eastern countries.

I find travelling constantly inspiring because it allows me to infuse my work with a range of influences and styles while endeavouring to reflect the personalities of my clients and dovetail with their lifestyles. I’m particularly fascinated by the design ethos of south-east Asia and often incorporate elements of its clean simplicity, symmetry and Feng Shui principles into my work. I also have a personal desire to learn and experience different cultures in order to become a wider person. So who knows where the world will take me next?