House of Hackney
“Feminine but fierce” is how House of Hackney’s FRIEDA GORMLEY describes the interiors brand’s signature aesthetic. Her East London home is testament to that.
When Frieda Gormley is pressed to describe House of Hackney — the bold, wildly exuberant British interiors brand she launched with her husband, Javvy M Royle, in 2011 — she recalls a recent quote that made her laugh. “It described our aesthetic as ‘if Edward Scissorhands and the Chelsea Flower Show had a love child,’ ” she says. “We thought it was funny but also quite true.”
From wallpapers and fabrics to lampshades and dresses, House of Hackney’s distinctive patterns reverberate with a heady mix of bold florals, exotic foliage and birds, animal print, and a moody, seductive colour palette drawing from nature’s most succulent hues. The vibe is much more Gothic meets rock’n’roll than everyday traditional chintz. “There’s a beauty in it, but irreverence and humour, too,” Gormley says.
The brand’s signature is feminine but “fierce” — a word Gormley also uses to describe her greatest inspiration of all, her Irish grandmother, Peg. “I definitely inherited her magpie’s eye for interiors and fashion,” says the Dublin-born designer. “She was on a first-name basis with every antiques dealer in town and her house, full of colour and texture, has very much been the aesthetic inspiration for what we do now.”
The idea for House of Hackney was born in the late noughties in part from Gormley’s childhood memories of homes swathed in patterned wallpaper, furniture and lampshades, but also from the couple’s own boredom with the “clinical white walls” of their then Scandi minimalist east London digs. “We couldn’t find what we wanted so we started trying to source it for ourselves,” says the former fashion buyer, who abandoned a degree in law to become a buyer at Topshop in London. Visits to grand historic British houses and antiques markets like Kempton Park Racecourse (in London’s south west) brought inspirations from the past, “but our eyes were also firmly on the future. We’ve never wanted to just re-create moments in time,” she says. What they’ve created instead is something Gormley hopes brings “unadulterated joy. The way a room can transform or enhance your mood is very powerful”. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Loddiges, the couple’s recently restored Victorian townhouse in Hackney (named after a famous Victorian palm house once situated a few streets away, and also inspiration for the duo’s popular Palmeral print). ››