Living Etc October 2020

Welcome to AW20. In usual circumstances, the interiors season kicks off with the London Design Festival, by which time, as journalists, we’ve spent the summer at buzzy press launches and grand fabric unveilings. Not this year. This season has arrived in a quieter and more reserved fashion. As a result, we’ve had a little more time than usual to reflect on what we’re seeing. In these pages we endeavour to showcase what beauty (in design) looks like in October 2020. To do this, we’ve focused on the people, places, products and ideas that are influencing us right now. As we worked on the content, one thing quickly became clear. Style is now all about the mix – beauty today is full of vibrancy, variety and confidence. The issue opens with a…

1 THE NEW STRIPE A bold stripe is timeless, yet how to move it in a more modern direction? Try a pattern with alternating widths that plays with perspective, like this green paper from James Malone Fabrics. Elsewhere, striped fabrics at GP&J Baker are working embroidery for an Aboriginal-inspired aesthetic, while Sanderson is opting for Ikat-feel patterns. Maia in Verde, £140 a roll, James Malone Fabrics at Altfield, Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour (altfield.com) 2 HIGH-STREET LIGHTING You’d be forgiven for doing a double take on sight of some of the high street’s autumn/winter lighting drops, each going to prove that you needn’t go designer to nab directional, agenda-setting pieces. Pay close attention to the Design Studio at John Lewis & Partners in particular, with mid-century-feel table and floor lamps fusing cone shapes in…

Tamsin Johnson INTERIOR DESIGNER Fashion turned interior designer Tamsin Johnson established her own practice in Sydney in 2013, after years of working in London. Her light-filled, graceful spaces, including her own multipurpose art gallery, showroom, antiques store and office in Paddington, celebrate ‘a spirit of tactful disharmony’, she says. Against clean white lines, Tamsin draws on a mix of texture, both ‘refined and the dishevelled’ (where woven wicker, rough stone and grainy woods meet velvet, bouclé and linen), inviting shapes, dramatic art and a jostle of contemporary, vintage and antique furniture. Whether designing a house, restaurant, office or boat, Tamsin’s design approach is both a little ‘irreverent and cheeky’ as well as deeply sophisticated and desirable. tamsinjohnson.com Rob Mills ARCHITECT With RMA practices in his hometown of Melbourne, also Sydney and LA, architect Rob Mills…

despite enjoying her career as a qualitative market researcher, Nina Plummer yearned for a job that covered her varied – of ten creative – interests. A house move from London to Edinburgh with her husband Craig four years ago led them to conceive an idea for an online interiors store and Ingredients LDN was born – a brand that celebrates a slower pace of living, selling pieces that embrace simple materials and an organic feel. Sum up your business in five words… Slow, thought ful, natural, aesthetic, personal. What was the light-bulb moment that led to you and Craig launching the business? We were renting a small apartment in Bayswater. When we moved out, the new tenant asked if she could buy all our furniture. That was when we thought others might…

“The daring of this sexy kitchen conceived by designer Patricia Bustos has to be applauded. It mixes Japanese influences with avant-garde ideas from Milan and the origami-inspired shapes contrast beautifully with the force of 21st-century colours and materials”…

A short drive from central Sydney, the house Dylan Farrell refers to as ‘Contemporary Perch’ looks like it’s been supplanted from the middle of the Australian outback. Set on a plain above a creek, one side of which is cut into a cliff, the sweeping lawns of the plot reach down to the water’s edge. The house itself straddles a manicured garden with a driveway on one side and a wilder section of bushland sloping towards the creek on the other. ‘The setting, on the edge of a park, is just jaw-dropping. It’s positioned to take advantage of these long, beautiful views,’ Dylan says. An interior designer and architect originally from New York City now running a practice in Sydney, Dylan was one of three designers to pitch for the project.…