Near Godley and Conran

They both live for design, in a sense, but in such different ways it scarcely seemed possible they could ever develop a shared design for living. Nevertheless, last April, Englishman Sebastian Conran, scion of the Conran's furniture family and head of his own product-design company, married the British avant-garde clothing designer Georgina Godley, much to the surprise, Godley suspects, of many of their friends. Thoroughly modem Conran (who describes himself as "a designer aspiring to be an inventor") produces everything from graphic film packaging to a chess set for children. Godley studied to be a painter and now creates medieval-flavored clothes in futuristic fabrics. "I'm much more involved in the visual," she says, "whereas he's more about the working, the realism of the object." The first fruits of this alliance of sense and sensibility are on view in the couple's justrestored Georgian town house in London's Kensington. Georgina notes that Sebastian, as heir to the Conran tradition, "finds it hard to accept that I've painted the bedroom three fairly controversial colors. Rooms are white, full stop. But, bless him, he's learning fast."

BEN BRANTLEY