No Permission Needed: Annie White on Building OLISE, Breaking Rules, and Backing Yourself

In this episode of the OLISE Podcast, Bilen sits down with three women who have each built a business on their own terms: Laylah Holmes, founder of Holmes Bespoke, Kalpa Patel, owner of Prestige Bathrooms, and Deborah Fiddy, founder of Gingerlily. Their routes into the industry look very different. Laylah moved from fashion and Ralph Lauren into rug design and started her business when her first daughter was eight months old. Kalpa went from retail management into bathrooms, then took over th...

In this episode of the OLISE Podcast, Annie sits down with award-winning designer Róisín Lafferty, founder of Róisín Lafferty Studio and Róisín Lafferty Gallery, for a rich and generous conversation about creativity, craftsmanship, and building a design business with no script to follow. Roisín shares the story of starting her studio at just 24, with no funding, no safety net and no real business plan, and how sixteen years of discipline, curiosity and self-belief have grown it into a team of...

In this episode of the OLISE Podcast, Bilen sits down with Jenny Weiss and Helen Bygraves, the founding directors behind Hill House Interiors, for a warm and candid conversation marking 29 years in business together. Jenny and Helen tell the story of how a chance meeting through their ex-husbands, and an impromptu champagne-fuelled trip to Henley, turned into a working partnership built on a six-month trial neither of them expected to outlast a single season. They speak openly about who they ...

In this episode of the OLISE Podcast, Bilen sits down with award-winning architect and interior designer Natalia Miyar for a candid and deeply personal conversation about identity, resilience, and a decade of building one of London's most distinctive design studios. Natalia shares her unconventional path into architecture, a journey that began in Mexico City, moved through Miami, and led her to London, where she has now spent almost twenty years. She speaks openly about the naivety of startin...

In this episode of the OLISE Podcast, Bilen sits down with interior designer Enass Mahmoud, founder of Studio Enass, for a powerful and honest conversation about heritage, representation, and what it means to build a design career with no roadmap to follow. Enass shares her journey from Sudan and London, growing up surrounded by the colour, craft and eccentric self-expression of Sudanese culture, and how that visual language has shaped her design philosophy. She speaks candidly about the real...