PEARL'S WORLD

TO DESCRIBE THE place where Pearl Lam (gallery owner, businesswoman, socialite) toils each day as an office is rather like labelling James Bond as a civil servant. Technically it's true, but it misses the heady glamour, the unexpected edge, of the reality. Work does, indeed, get done here - there are rooms full of employees, labouring away, and every now and then, couriers from the outside world wander through bearing vital documents. These messengers always have the same baffled look, as if they can't quite believe what they're witnessing.

James Bond, in fact, was partly the inspiration for Lam's striking decor. So was Austin Powers. So was Star Wars. And somewhere in among the gilding and the padding and the shadowy ripeness of it all, homage is being paid to Louis XIV, the French Sun King. Even the front door bears a gold silken tassel (very Versailles) as well as a huge circular mirror, so that the first thing you see is yourself, looking right royally startled.

Lam's office is in Jardine House, and that building's distinctive round windows provided a theme for her interior. There are circles, or slices of circles, everywhere: hammered chrome circles bouncing down the wall of her private office, a round gong incorporated into the cupboard behind her desk, white plaster semi-circles (inspired by a Sanderson fabric from the 1960s) in the painting gallery which is used for exhibitions, and two massive, stainless-steel James-Bond-style portals which are opened and closed electronically. (The noise and vibration involved in this operation, incidentally, is on a par with the space shuttle blasting off.)

It is hardly a coincidence, however, that Lam's gallery, which sells contemporary furnishings, is called Contrasts. This is a tale of the unexpected: just when you think you've seen enough circles, you enter the pantry which is black and white and rigidly linear. Lam insists that this room, inspired by the artist Bridget Riley is her favourite, although those of a less robust constitution might succumb to migraine in minutes.

In the same unpredictable mode, Lam's mother, Koo-siu ying, has a splendid room from which she can oversee her daughter's business, but amid the outrageous red padding and gold leaf, there are Tang horses, blue and white ceramics and a small altar to Kwan Yin, the incense from which wafts around the office as if to remind visitors where in the world they are. The layout of the rooms, confusing though it might be, follows the principles of fung shui.

The desk in Koo's room expresses further bracketing of the unlikely: it's made of rosewood and crocodile-effect leather. It looks as if it might have a secret button which drops tedious visitors into a shark pool (such is the deliberately camp atmosphere of Lam's workplace that it's almost impossible to visit without doing imitations of Dr Evil and Mini-me, seeking world domination). Like all the other desks in the office, it was conjured up by the Contrasts' in-house team, XYZ Design, who are happy to create offices and homes for less . . . vivid folk than the irrepressible Lam.