One Day with: Bernie de Le Cuona

ONE DAY WITH | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA 

South Africa-born UK-based textile entrepreneur Bernie de Le Cuona has built a brand rooted in resourcefulness, sustainability, and an enduring connection to Africa. Speaking with Camilla Frances, she reflects on her rural beginnings, the rhythms and rituals of her days, and how the landscapes, textures, and spirit of her homeland continue to shape her work and worldview.

INTERVIEW BY CAMILLA FRANCES | MASTERS & MUSES | 1 APRIL 2026

Bernie creating moodboards with interior designer Christian Bense in London.

Textile entrepreneur Bernie de Le Cuona, founder and CEO of her eponymous brand, was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where time spent on her mother and stepfather’s dairy farm shaped her enduring creative and business philosophy. Witnessing the rhythms of rural and agricultural living in the country, Bernie absorbed a deep respect for nature, resourcefulness, and the African “can-do” spirit, which she says was born of necessity. "Nothing was wasted; everything was repurposed, from materials to ideas," she reflects.

Now based in Windsor, England, Bernie continues to draw on these formative experiences, taking great inspiration from Africa’s landscapes, textures, and ingenuity. Bernie talks Camilla Frances through the rhythms and rituals of her days in and out of the office, sharing how Africa, no matter how far away, remains at the heart of de Le Cuona.

Luxurious handmade linens, designed and produced by de Le Cuona.

I am an early riser. I’m quite rigid about my morning routine and I’m up at 5am every day. I do go to bed early to wake up at 5am, but it doesn’t actually matter. Whatever time I get to bed, I’m generally up and wide awake at 5am; I’m in that routine.

I always start the day with a good coffee. It takes me about 15-20 minutes to mentally align myself with the day and get my breathing going, and then my husband and I will go for a run with our boxer dog, Sasha. There are so many lovely parks in Windsor, where we live, and where the de Le Cuona head offices are. Some are so big that I could run for 30 or 40 miles in them. We'll drive to one and have a really good run before heading home for breakfast. I just eat fruit and nuts and yoghurt, possibly porridge.

I really need exercise first thing. If I don’t go running or get any exercise I can be a bit of a monster, so I do find it’s an important habit to keep! Once you’ve been doing it every day for more than 10 years, it becomes a habit, and I can do it wherever I am. When I’m in New York I’ll go window shopping during my morning run.

I travel a lot because I don’t like to work with mills unless I've visited. I like to see where the yarns come from. I like to see how they’re spun and see for myself the care and pride they take in producing cloth. I also run the American business and go to America about every six weeks. Our US head office is in New York, and we're also in 14 showrooms around the country.

I’m usually at my desk by 9:15am. I’ve got an old Georgian house in Windsor, a 10-minute walk from our head office, which is over the road from Windsor Castle. The house we’ve got for our head office is called Mistress Page's House. The story goes that it was built for a mistress of one of the kings so apparently there’s a tunnel from our house to the castle...

I’m the founder and CEO of de Le Cuona so I’m at the helm of design and business. I’m refining our vision, so no two days are the same. Usually though, the first thing I do is visit my design team. I’ll be motivating them, coming up with ideas (I come up with too many ideas, it drives them nuts), helping them to refine ideas, guide them, mentor them and having a look at all the new fibres and colors that have come into us from the mill.

Every day is different. We could have a mill visiting bringing new yarns and fibres. We only work with boutique, specialist mills in Europe and it’s a collaborative process. Sometimes it starts with a yarn, and our team will design the structure and start sampling; other times, a mill might bring something they’ve trialled, and we’ll say, ‘that’s great, now can we try this’. We’ll hand designs over to the mill, but we’ll always specify the fibres, and mix of fibres. Once we’ve got that right, we’ll start on the color.

We work with different mills because I want to produce different fabrics. If I was to buy our own mill, which was an option, it would restrict the textures and finishes we are able to produce. I want to be able to produce rich velvets, heavily textured linens, and fine cashmere sheers, so I have to use a lot of specialist mills to achieve this.

Bernie walking in Africa, a source of great inspiration for de Le Cuona.

I live close to the office so I often take the dog out and go home for lunch. Those are my favorite lunches; I’ll eat anything that’s in the fridge or in the cupboards, usually salad-based. There’s a Windsor farm shop close by, which sells delicious organic meats and other deli products. Some days I’ll skip lunch because I’m driving to a meeting, so fruits and nuts are my go-to. It sounds very boring, but it does get you through the day. 

Some afternoons I might drive into London for creative projects. I also head up marketing, and my favorite days are working on our creative campaigns, like those we’ve created with Damian Foxe. One video was made during Covid, to show people what we were creating when we couldn’t visit. We were thrilled to book Edward Watson, principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, and we asked him to express the flow and fall of de Le Cuona fabrics through movement in this huge warehouse in London. It was beautiful. We have just made a new video on flax fields.

It’s costly to run a luxury company. Everything has to be of the highest quality, from customer service to packaging, and of course the product. Some companies go to a mill with a specific spend in mind. The mills then have to use synthetic fibres, or all sorts of different tricks to bring the costs down. We don’t do that. We design fabrics using the finest fibres we can find, and then try to get the best price we can by working closely with the mills. For us, there are no shortcuts. Our customers are informed, they would know it wasn't a good quality product.

Left to Right: Damian Foxe, Edward Watson and Bernie de Le Cuona on set.

My business started out of necessity. I grew up in South Africa but found myself living in the UK, having lived in Belgium for a year. I had to earn a living but I was questioning how. I'd studied interior architecture, so one day, a good friend, a designer, asked me to go to India and buy high quality rugs for the South African market. 

In India, I saw incredible weaving skill. I was also struck by the amazing all-natural colors they were achieving out there. I started to think I could combine what I’d learnt in Belgium, where I’d worked with beautiful linens, with the skill I was witnessing in India. I got some flax sent to India and started learning to weave on a hand loom. I then had some beautiful cushions made from the fabrics we created.

Nicky Haslam was one of the first designers I showed them to. Luckily, he loved them. I had no idea about the interior design industry or how it worked, but I wanted to make beautiful things and giving up wasn’t an option. I realised I couldn’t control the quality quite so well in India – this was 30 years ago, and India was too far away from home, no zoom then – so I started to make fabrics in Europe, where I could travel easily and control the quality better.

I drink too much coffee, but it definitely helps with energy. That said, I’m usually very fired up; I always have plans about the next thing. It’s really hard to separate my life from my business, it all seems to be one, and that’s very exciting. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have a ton of challenges. I feel very lucky to work in an industry that deals with beautiful things, works with wonderful people and serves me inspiration all the time. 

The stunning landscapes of Africa continue to inspire de Le Cuona's color palettes. 

Africa, where I’m from, is where I get most of my inspiration. This is especially true in terms of color and texture, and the relaxed interior environment that most people tend to live with. My husband is from Zimbabwe and together we go to Zambia a lot.

Our color palettes do not come from Pantone. We use colors directly from nature and Zambia is a real inspiration. I am known to come back with a box full of bark and stones, which go off to the mills to color match. I feel so strongly that laboratory made color doesn’t do anything for our lives, so we try to use color from nature and over the years we’re refined our palette.

People don’t always understand where linen comes from. They also don’t always appreciate the pride that farmers and weavers have in farming flax and producing this beautiful fabric. I get quite overwhelmed when I see how much these specialist farmers really care about linen, and how creative they are. They are so proud because flax farming is really the top of the tree, the most luxurious thing you can farm, but it’s very laborious to farm too. So, we commissioned a film and called it 'True Luxury Takes Time'.

Flax farmers have immense pride in what they do. From successfully sewing a seed to pulling it out of the ground and sending it off to the scutcher, it's quite a process. I wanted to try and get that across, rather than just filming a loom, which has been done many times before. We are bombarded with stuff from social media all the time, it’s quite hard to get anyone’s attention so I feel we have to do something unusual and special. I want to show people how the linen is made. I do want people to watch it and feel like they’ve learnt something; I feel that's important when people have given their time.

We launched the film in Paris, during Deco Off, and one of the farmers came. We had a big room, and we’d covered the walls in fabric, and had a special place for them to sit. We were all moved to see their work and craft presented that way. We went to show the spinner too and they had tears in their eyes. I think it’s quite emotional to see the creative value of your work like that. That was a great day.

When I get home from work, dinner is usually very simple. Mainly vegetables and salads with organic meat or fish; I’m not a great cook but my husband loves risotto, so we eat a lot of that. We both enjoy cooking and eating together in the evening. 

I often unwind by reading. I read everything, a lot about business, and history. I love Robert Harris, who wrote Conclave, I’ve been reading that. I read everything I can get my hands on about Africa, and I recently read a book about Peggy Guggenheim, which was fascinating and made me want to go to Venice again.

I also listen to books if I can’t go to sleep. I do prefer paper but I can’t always turn the light on if my husband is trying to go to sleep so audio books have become important for me. I love them, it's the best way to end a long, busy day.

Bernie de Le Cuona reading on location in Zambia.