“We’re not the taste police”: meet Chloe Dowsett, the specialist artist at Rolls-Royce

"There's bespoke and there's bespoke... and there’s complete one-off bespoke, which is where we fit in.” Chloe Dowsett is demonstrating how she provides Rolls-Royce’s clients with the most bespoke interior detailing service since someone ushered Michelangelo into the Sistine Chapel and asked “Reckon you can make this gaff look mint?” In minutes she turns a chalk outline into the most vivid 2D kingfisher we’ve ever seen, so lifelike that it might leap off its leather canvas and flitter around the room.

Chloe works in the interior trim centre in a super-secret studio deep within Rolls’ Goodwood HQ, off limits to prying eyes and, er, Top Gear photographers. To understand how she wound up there, we need to rewind. Born into a creative family, Chloe spent her childhood painting, drawing and sculpting. Yep: if you dream of being a master craftsperson for the world’s most luxurious car brand, start with papier-mache. She was on Neil Buchanan’s kids TV classic Art Attack, and her certificate for it hangs next to that of her art degree at home. “They are equally as important.” Too right.

After her studies followed a string of jobs that took her as far afield as New York, and as niche as writing gags for a CGI reboot of The Wombles as one of the project’s storyboard artists. She later started her own business doing everything from murals to signwriting, but began to panic she was saying 'yes' to work that didn’t represent her as an artist. “A fine artist wants to prove a point,” she explains. “You’re like a scientist. There’s an intention. You have an idea and you want to create something out of it.”

Photography: Tom Barnes

That led her to Rolls, initially sewing seats on the production line, and then on to the small team led by the acclaimed Mark Court, whose freehand coach lines have made him a cult hero. Because nothing else says Rolls like having one man to meticulously hand-paint pinstripes. Although, when he started the company made a few hundred cars a year; these days it’s around 6,000. New recruits were inevitable.

“Coachline’s like his baby,” says Chloe. “He’s so proud to be there and he wants it to be the best.” So like an old-school apprenticeship she studied him for months, getting hands on only occasionally at first and then more frequently as she earned his trust. Chloe was used to using 10 per cent of a brush tip for her own art, but Mark taught her to lay the whole thing onto the car’s surface. “Which felt so alien,” she explains, while inside thinking “How dare you tell me how to hold a paintbrush!

“But you do, you have to push it all the way down to the bristle and pull it along so it almost pulls itself.” It sounds like trying to copy someone’s handwriting. “It’s worse! There’s no two goes at it. You can’t practice on the side of a car. There is a lot of pressure.”

We’ve got painters now, so let’s celebrate translucency, accidental marks, brushstrokes

Chloe emerged with flying colours, absorbing Mark’s sense of care and tradition in the process. “In my new job they call me the paintbrush police,” she says of her scrupulous cleaning regime. “But how cool would it be in 30 years if I’ve got the brush I started with?” Very cool. And very Rolls.

So, the new job: if you want to treat the inside of your Phantom as the world’s most sophisticated blank canvas, Chloe is who you call. She can turn her hand to almost any leather surface inside the car, from tiny embellishments to full headliners. They get all sorts of requests – including pet likenesses, because of course – but Rolls doesn’t judge. “We’re not the taste police,” Chloe insists. “If you want it, you can have it.” Fido on the glovebox, anyone?

Leather is stretchy, so Rolls spent years developing techniques with an acrylic paint that’s applied before the leather’s protective coating, for maximum durability. Its waxy surface means it absorbs the paint, but not to the point you lose the colour. Which is the same wet as it is dry. Easier to visualise, you see. The skin is textured, and ripples as it’s painted, something that’s now second nature to Chloe. “If I painted on paper it’d be strange.”

While Rolls’ designers will often simply hand Chloe some requests and let her crack on, she does meet some customers to give her input. “The percentage of artistic license we have is increasing all the time. You’re buying into what we are able to do... and then you have to look at it every single day.

“If you want something abstract, let’s celebrate paint because if you’re doing something neat, you could print it. You could laser etch it. You could embroider it. We’ve got painters now, so let’s celebrate translucency, accidental marks, brushstrokes. That’s what’s great about painting, all painted cars are a one-off.”

Chloe doesn’t think she’ll get bored any time soon, and can see herself taking on “the whole process” from concept to application in the future. “Ideally I’d bring my own artwork in and maybe do a car that was my own design. That’d be great.” You could call it the ultimate in creative freedom. Which is what all artists crave, right? “One hundred per cent. Always. It’s such a curse.”