Hamish Dodd’s boyhood bedroom was a sight to behold. The interior design guru and television personality still thanks his mum Adrienne, also an interior designer, for letting him loose with his own style, and his accountant dad, Paul, for teaching him to fly. You can catch Hamish on The Café and may remember him from shows like My House My Castle and, more recently, the 100 Day Bach. When he’s not on the telly or with clients, Hamish and son Hunter, 11, can often be found tinkering with Hamish’s treasured Honda CB 750 motorbike.
You are described on Wikipedia as a celebrity interior designer — is it cool to have your own Wikipedia page?
I’ll be honest, I think it’s probably cooler for my son. Yeah, it’s kind of cool! Yesterday I was playing video games with my son (and his friend) and we had the whole moment where they were beating me, surprise, surprise, and I turned around and looked at them and went “Well, at least I’ve got a Wikipedia page”. They they cracked up laughing. It’s a fun point of merriment I think.
Did you dream of being a celebrity interior designer as a kid?
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No, I did not dream of being that — I wanted to be a fighter pilot. My dreams were of being Maverick from Top Gun. I can remember vividly sitting down with my cousins when we were much younger when the movie actually came out and watching it, and my cousin saying to me “Is that what you want to be when you grow up?” And I was like “Yup, that’s what I want to be”.
How did you end up in design instead?
I was 17 when I finished school and dad basically enrolled me at Manukau Tech to do horticulture. I was mildly horrified — you know, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Well, maybe he knew me better than I knew myself because doing horticulture at tech led me to going overseas, studying landscape design in London, learning a lot more about interiors and then coming back and it’s flowed into what has become my passion for 25 years.
So, your dad had an old warbird from Vietnam?
I grew up flying that with my father and doing the airshow circuit and bits and pieces. I don’t fly it any more — he does. I guess people have holiday houses, some people have launches, some people go on big trips every year and our thing was this whole process of building this aeroplane and flying with it around the countryside. I’m very privileged to have seen New Zealand from the air in the fashion I have. The plane came out of Vietnam but it was a wreck. Like, there was nothing left of it. There were no windows in it. It had been sitting since the war parked up on an airbase. I think it was Tan Son Nhut (the American airbase) it came from. There were rows and rows of them up there.
What were your other passions as a child?
Tennis and waterskiing was my buzz, and old vehicles.
How did your mum, Adrienne, influence you?
Mum is an interior designer so we had a home that had been styled by an interior designer. It was beautiful and my sister and I were very lucky because we basically had free rein when it came to our bedrooms. I think that gave me a big appreciation of how much a space can influence how you feel and the enjoyment you can get from a room. Mine was crazy.
How crazy?
It was rich marigold yellow with a rich wall across the back with crazy lights, and big bookcases and gold and dark blue upholstered curved bedheads and footstalls, and velvet curtains with gold tassels on them. I mean, it was endless. Beautiful mirrors. I remember people used to come round and look at my bedroom and go “Wow! Seriously, this is your bedroom?”
What ideas did you bring back from London?
London was hugely inspirational for me. I enrolled in design school there and I got to travel to beautiful gardens. But other than the big estates most people’s gardens were small courtyard gardens. They lived in infill housing which is where we are at now, but 20 years ago when I came back that was not the case. People didn’t spend much on the garden — there was a bit of a concrete slab out the back and a few plants, whereas now these smaller spaces are seen as valued and they’re an extension of the house. People now spend money on things like Louvretec systems to cover them in and water features to make them a true sanctuary and extension of the home and what you are looking at through the window. The outside is not just the outside anymore, it’s part of the house.
What is your greatest accomplishment?
It’s family. It’s providing a good life for my son. He’s a wonderful child. He has a great outlook on life and he’s better than me in many regards, which is what you want for them, right? And my wife, Anita. She’s super supportive of my endeavours which you don’t always get. I’m very lucky. I’ve got an old motorbike in the garage, I restored an old tractor last year. I get to do all these wonderful things.
