Posh pastries — the king's goddaughter has opened a new cafe

Times

29-04-2025

India Hicks, an interior designer, former Ralph Lauren model and ambassador for the King's Trust, her godfather Charles II's charity, is buzzing around a building site ahead of the opening of her latest project. Naya will be a patisserie dishing up cream buns and lobster rolls, champagne and iced pistachio lattes in opulent surroundings, which have been conceived by Hicks in her role as creative director. A banana tree sprouts from Naya's centre, framed by green velvet booths. There are leopard-print soft furnishings and there is hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper. The place has been designed 'not just for culinary fans. We want the international crowd to land in London and say, we've got to go to Naya,' Hicks says. 'We want a community of people: fashion, cultural, international.'
Hicks is creating Naya in collaboration with Can and Cengizhan Ayan — two Gen Z brothers from the Turkish chocolatier Pelit, which has been in their family for four generations. The partnership was formed after a family friend of the brothers attended a reading Hicks was doing with her mother, Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (formerly Prince Louis of Battenberg), lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II and the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Upon meeting, Hicks and the Ayan brothers immediately found a connection. 'They understood and appreciated their legacy, but they wanted to do something independent,' Hicks says. 'And I thought about myself when I was 18. I lived under the very imposing shadow of a very well-known father, grandfather, family … I left England so that I could paint my own picture on my own canvas, and that's exactly what they're doing.'
India Hicks's father was the celebrated and innovative designer David Hicks, who died in 1998. He created interiors for the likes of the king of Saudi Arabia and Vidal Sassoon; and his geometric carpets featured in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. His work also graced the floors of Windsor Castle, with other royal commissions including decorating Charles's first apartment at Buckingham Palace.
Hicks grew up in Oxfordshire and was bridesmaid at the wedding of Charles — who is also her second cousin — and Lady Diana Spencer. She attended Gordonstoun boarding school and, aged 18, left the UK to study photography in Boston. In subsequent years she has worked as an interior designer and an author. She lives in London and the Bahamas and is on the board of the Global Empowerment Mission, which offers disaster relief.
What she is not, however, is a cook. 'I wouldn't even know what the kitchen in my house looks like.' Not learning to cook, she says, is something that she inherited from her mother. 'I'll go to Ukraine and I'll be on the front line with bombs going off around me delivering aid, but I'm not going to cook. That's just not a skill set I have or need.'
Hicks relinquishes such duties at dinner parties to her husband, David Flint Wood, also a designer. Instead her role is to 'always make sure that the atmosphere is beautiful', which is what she is doing at Naya, creating not only the gorgeous interiors but also the patisserie's packaging, which will change with the seasons. And although she does not make buns, she does like eating them.
'I eat a lot of chocolate,' she says. Dressed in a sleek taupe coat over a slim-fitting T-shirt and jeans, Hicks's figure is down to the fact that she 'exercises an awful lot — but I do indulge an awful lot'. Her yoga and paddleboarding regimen is fuelled by old-school desserts, including queen of puddings (hot milk-soaked breadcrumbs, meringue and jam) and her grandfather's favourite, shar brei, a creamy concoction with brandy snaps crumbled atop it.
However, a sweet tooth is not something shared by the whole family. The King, for instance, is not one for overindulgence. 'He takes unbelievably good care of himself,' says Hicks, particularly following his recent cancer treatment. 'He's a remarkable person. I think about what he's going through now, and yet he's still out nearly every day, we're seeing him, despite probably what would have knocked a lot of people.'
The family connection remains close. Hicks and her mother were at Highgrove on the weekend before we meet (there are cushion-stuffed hessian bags from the estate dotted around Naya) — even if, as far as its menu is concerned, 'I haven't said, 'Let's have Battenberg cake,' yet'. (Although the Ayan brothers think it is worth a punt, having added it to their roster alongside a series of Turkish sweets they hope will give the viral Dubai chocolate bar a run for its money)
Hicks's intention is that guests will 'linger in the space', swooning over the hand-painted birds and braiding, just as she and the interior designer Anna Goulandris — a friend she met at their 'awful' boarding school, aged 11 — do during my tour. Naya's design leads riff off each other enthusiastically, mulling the art, the fabric choices, whether a live DJ will become a part of the final offering. 'I've been the creative force right from the beginning and I hope to go all the way through,' Hicks says. 'Beyond the launch, I want to have this as part of my life.'
Naya soft launches on April 24; nayaandco.com