10 Questions with… Faye Toogood

Toogood Showroom, Milan Design Week 2024. Photography © Federico Ciamei.

We caught up with super-busy British Designer Faye Toogood, fresh from the Stockholm Furniture Fair, where she was a guest of honor, and Maison et Objet in Paris, where she was named Designer of the Year for 2025.

Beginning her career as a journalist at The World of Interiors, she was an assistant, then stylist, and then Decoration Editor. It was an experience she credits with giving her depth and breadth. After a period of several years, she needed a change. Seeking to move into something more 3D and tangible, she began experimenting with various media including fashion, furniture, and sculpture and her approach skewed bold and avant garde. It was difficult at first since she was one of the few female designers in the U.K. However, she found success and now runs a 25-person studio, which she maintains is a perfect number, allowing her to work with each person more closely.

One of her first large successes was the Roly-Poly chair, a mix of the tender and brutal to which the public strongly responded. It became an icon, a symbol of her unique approach to design. “The chair is better known than I am,” she notes. At Maison et Objet, she created an installation called “Womanifesto,” a striking, Surrealism-leaning representation of her subconscious. (This was a theme both at the show and at events in town during the fair.)

At the moment, Toogood has a show called Assemblage 7: Lost and Found II at Friedman Benda in New York City—her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, which is running until March 15, 2025. In it, she takes two mediums (English oak and Purbeck marble) and uses them to convey time, the high quality of British craftsmanship, and material landscape. “My driving force is the desire to make our lives less ordinary. Whether through clothes, furniture, or objects, I try to make people’s lives more beautiful, more interesting, more sculptural. It’s always a question of geometry, sculpture and materials.”

Faye Toogood. Photography courtesy of Faye Toogood.

Faye Toogood Redefines Design With Avant-Garde Vision

Faye Toogood x Maison Matisse Esquisses collection. Photography by © Genevieve Lutkin.

Interior Design: You work in multiple fields including interior design, furniture design, fashion, and more. How do these separate disciplines cross-pollinate?

Faye Toogood: Working across different disciplines—interiors, fine art, furniture, fashion—feels natural to me, stemming from a desire to explore and express creativity in multiple forms. Without formal design education, I feel I have the freedom to bring unique ideas from one genre into another, fostering a cross-pollination of concepts that is both enriching and innovative. Each project at my studio, regardless of its nature, informs and inspires each other.

Within the studio, the team works side-by-side and there are naturally instances where ideas cross pollinate, whether it’s on color, form, or materials. We also encourage the team to dip into projects outside their skillset so we blend and share our skills. Often, an idea or a narrative will also influence the work for a period of time right across the studio—for example, “earth” inspired the material of a limited edition Roly-Poly chair, the colors of a Winter collection, and the textured pigment for a hand-painted coat.

Despite the varied contexts, a consistent thread runs through all our projects: meticulous attention to detail. Whether we’re crafting a piece of furniture, designing an interior, or creating a fashion collection, the process is rooted in a deep respect for craftsmanship and materiality.

ID: You are known for championing women’s representation, which was a focus of Maison&Objet this year. How does your visibility and work benefit other women in the design industry?

FT: When I was starting out, there were very few women in the design industry. While I’m happy to say that the situation today is much better, there still isn’t an equal balance of male and female designers. So many women work around the design industry—for example in curation, marketing—but we still need more to come to the forefront of design.

As a woman, I struggled at the start of my career. I thought I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a female designer, and I cut color, textiles, and decoration from my practice as I felt they were considered typically feminine.

Fortunately, the culture around design has shifted and I think the design space is more open and encouraging to women. I hope the visibility I have achieved, and perhaps also my unconventional path to design, will inspire other women to become designers.

Toogood Showroom, Milan Design Week 2024. Photography © Federico Ciamei.

ID: At Maison et Objet, your presentation was called “Womanifesto.” Can you unpack what you sought to achieve?

FT: “Womanifesto,” was very personal. It was an emptying out of my female artist’s and designer’s brain—an attempt to reveal the four parts of my subconscious that are the guiding principles of my work: DRAWING, SCULPTURE, MATERIAL AND LANDSCAPE. The installation was divided into four rooms to illustrate each of these themes and how they are integral to the studio’s work—both today and going forward.  

DRAWING has become more and more important to the studio, and I find myself eager to explore and use more pattern and color. SCULPTURE consists of geometry and form, which is a thread that connects everything we do. MATERIALS are the essence of Toogood and the starting point of all our projects. LANDSCAPE has always been an essential inspiration to me and I see its influence in my work as a way to connect humanity and nature.

ID: You’ve said that you like to let your mind wander and daydream, rather than using technology. How does that process inform your work and how does it eventually translate into physical designs?

FT: I don’t use a computer to design and I try my best to remove myself from outside influences and distractions, which is challenging in our visually noisy world. I like to take myself into almost a child-like state of play, to create as unconsciously as possible. I work in 3D with everyday materials—cardboard, wire, tape, canvas. I’ll work on shapes and geometry in miniature arriving at a series of maquettes, before we start building forms at full scale.

Gummy Armchair and Palette Coffee Table. Photography by © D.R.

Puffy Chair. Photography © courtesy of Hem.

ID: How did working in magazine editorial help shape your views on design, fashion, and more?

FT: In my early twenties, I got a job at The World of Interiors Magazine and worked as the Interiors Editor for eight years. I was interested in reinvention and change, and this is exactly what I did—every month involved a new concept for an interior. What I liked about working at World of Interiors was that it wasn’t solely about interiors. It was where I learned about architecture, antiques, art, materials, and interiors. We covered everything from embroidery to a house in Africa to an archive of somebody’s spectacles. There was no hierarchy to objects or spaces—we might feature an 18th century teapot, a chair made from paper, a squat in London, or a Swedish palace. Everything was treated with the same reverence. It taught me to be experimental—working for a magazine, we had small budgets and I was often creating environments out of very little. I also learned the importance of connection to people and humanity, and that it wasn’t all about trends and fashion.

ID: When you formed your own brand, what was your manifesto?

FT: I wanted to find an expressive, energetic world full of creative freedom that focused on creating objects to make our lives less ordinary. I saw my practice as an agent for change. My curiosity and fascination has led to an interdisciplinary career—I enjoy working on the fringes of art, industry, and design.  

Roly Poly Chair. Photography by © D.R.

ID: Your Roly-Poly Chair is an undisputed icon. You said it helped you understand what a female designer is. Can you expand on that?

FT: Roly-Poly was a shift in geometry and aesthetic. It was designed when I was pregnant with my first child. Its friendly, playful, rounded shapes were a departure from the angles and hard lines of my earlier work. This shift reflected my journey into motherhood and seeing the world through the eyes of a child; everything had to be smooth and fall-off-able! Roly-Poly became the spearhead for a range of products and spaces with softer, more rounded forms.

Prior to this time, when I started out, I didn’t want to be put in the craft bracket, so I produced all this strong, angular furniture from heavyweight materials like bronze, mesh, steel, and concrete. I hate being pigeonholed. And since I was already an outsider—having not had an official design education—I could assert myself as someone who didn’t stick to prescribed notions of what a female artist or designer should be.

ID: You grew up without a TV in the English countryside. How did nature and your process of assembling and arranging natural materials inspire your work?

FT: So much of my work is inspired by the natural British landscape—the materials, forms, and colors. We didn’t have a television or many toys at home as children, so much of our time was spent outdoors. I used to love collecting natural objects—stones, feathers, leaves—and would find myself arranging them for hours on shelves in my room. This passion has continued, and I find the landscape a constant source of inspiration for form, colors and materials.

“Womanifesto.” Photography by © D.R.

Roly-Poly Chair. Photography by © Matthew Donaldson.

ID: I read that for your first collection you wanted to bring together—among other things—the masculine and the feminine. Can you discuss this dichotomy?

FT: I enjoy playing with narratives, dichotomies and polar opposites—be that the masculine and the feminine, the precious and the raw, the urban and the landscape, the natural and the manmade, and the soft and the hard. It allows me to create tension and narrative, which sometimes can be uncomfortable. I also think it is about me questioning value: a shift in values, a new value system.

ID: You once said, “I try to make people’s lives more beautiful, more interesting, more sculptural.” Please discuss how your approach to design accomplishes this.

FT: I feel my design work is less about solving functional problems and more about connecting with people. I believe that people want objects in their lives because they enjoy living with them or because they make them feel good, whether it’s a coat, a chair, or a mug. Good materials, sculptural form, craftsmanship, and elements of the landscape are my ingredients with which I create and with which I hope to resonate with people on an emotional level.

“Womanifesto.” Photography by © D.R.