British designer Faye Toogood is the interiors whizz who decks fashion boutiques out with their beloved Roly Poly and Puffy chairs. She keeps members of the art world in unisex utility jackets. Her homes have become the definition of house porn, owing to her partner Matt Gibberd’s business (the little known minimalist luxury estate agency, ).
But the multi-disciplinary artist – who effortlessly straddles the notoriously-hard-to-penetrate spheres of design and counts Comme des Garçons, and as clients – doesn’t bother herself with the business of fashion. She is not a disciple of trends, nor does she read about them. Rather, Toogood is interested in clothing as a form of identity, in society’s propensity for uniforms, in garments as sculpture, in abandoning all notions of tailoring tradition, in colour and in textiles.
In fact, despite once cutting off and bleaching her hair and pledging to only wear white, the tastemaker has rarely considered the arc of her personal style. Until British came probing. “It’s interesting how style evolves for some people, but, for me, it’s always been connected to what’s going on in my world – [both internally and externally],” explains Toogood, serene in buttery neutrals, as the bustle of her 2008-founded eponymous studio plays out behind her on Zoom.
That period of colourless austerity, for example, followed the birth of her daughter Indigo and then twins Wren and Etta. “It was ridiculous really, but it somehow made se.
