This year’s International Women’s Day is about inspiring inclusion, so I thought I’d shine a spotlight on the incredible women who help shape the work of interior design.

For an interior designer who loves colour, I’m stepping out of my comfort zone here, by applauding the work of Syrie Maugham, known for her entirely white interiors. I have to admit white interiors make me nervous, but that's probably because I have two teenagers who like chocolate! However, I understand why Syrie chose this style, and the narrative behind her work.

- She was an Edwardian balking at cluttered and overly stuffed Victorianism.

- She was a women who refused to be defined by the men in her life - her father, Thomas Barnardo, founded the children’s charity that still bears his name.

- She chose her own path. She was engaged by the time she was 16 but broke it off when she realised her fiancé had a mistress. She met Henry Wellcome, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, who was 26 years her senior. They married when she was 22.

- She courted controversy. She embarked on an affair with the novelist and playwright William Somerset Maugham, who was mainly interested in men, marrying him when she became pregnant, to give her daughter respectability.

Strange as it may seem, these experiences inspired her interiors business. With Maugham’s attentions employed elsewhere, she started painting and re-upholstering furniture, which she then sold. From these humble beginnings, her interiors business grew during the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Nearly a century ago, Syrie declared that women in business should be taken seriously, in a newspaper column titled “Back to Real Womenhood”. I’m inspired by her determination and business drive (although her personal life sounds like a headache!).

It’s a shame her name is not remembered more widely, despite the impact her interiors made to the design sector. I bet you can’t name many female entrepreneurs even now.