I’ve changed my life with a bespoke VW Transporter

Growing up in Germany in the ’70s and ’80s, the daughter of a British army regimental sergeant major, Rhonda Drakeford wanted “to design planes or vehicles, because that’s what I was surrounded by”, says the designer. “I thought I was going to be in the army, I didn’t see a job outside.” 

Her father had different ideas – “my dad was, like, there’s no way you could be in the army” – and so, on the recommendation of a teacher, she applied to Central Saint Martins in London to study graphic design. “I didn’t even really know what it was. I was very naive but I’d always had this problem-solving mind, an interest in the engineering side of things, and that translated really well to design.”

In 2009 she launched the interior design and accessories brand and store Darkroom, in Bloomsbury, with Lulu Roper-Caldbeck. Seven years later this morphed into Studio Rhonda, whose modernist, Ba...
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