Sunshine state

The pandemic forced designer Lucy Folk home from her inspiration-gathering travels. Now she’s finding rich bedrock in subtropical surrounds skirted by beach and bush. By Alice Birrell.

The pandemic forced Lucy Folk home from her travels. Now she’s finding rich bedrock in surrounds skirted by beach and bush.

LUCY FOLK WAS in the US, leaving for Europe when the pandemic hit last March. “We made the call to head in the opposite direction and come back to Australia,” she recounts. Pregnant with her son, Malon, she returned to Noosa and her family’s beach house. Inspired by Californian architect Charles Moore, it’s become a sanctuary, and a bolthole in a holiday town from which to create.

Fittingly, an off-duty mood ebbs beneath all she does for her label Lucy Folk, which began with jewellery but has metamorphosed into resortwear including post-swim-ready terry robes and slides, accessories and, this year, homewares. Hers is a joyfully unerring, stripped-back vision of summer with a global lilt, drawing on voyages to Morocco and Mexico – though now that’s off limits.

Instead, Australia is fuelling her outlook. “Slowing down, staying put, becoming a mother – all factors that have meant I’ve needed to take a bit of a creative approach to creativity. There’s something about the simplicity of how we live at the moment that I’m finding really inspiring and, in a way, I feel more creative than ever.”

Books, conversations with customers and local artists, and the landscape are enriching her. “There is so, so much in Australia to tap into,” she emphasises.

The space she has created, focused on textures and natural materials, incorporates warm tones – as if everything is bathed in the honey glow of late summer. “It’s light, airy, and very much a home,” she says.

As she expands on homewares of quilts, napkins and tablecloths and a Paddington store designed by Tamsin Johnson is set to open in Sydney in September, she’s finding herself still drawn to the coast. “We are on the fringe of the National Park and I am enamoured by its beauty. We are forever downing tools, and heading across for a swim.”

Top: “The green of the sofa is the kind of tone I always gravitate towards – bright, but there’s an earthiness to it that’s not at all harsh,” says Folk. “My dad is a serious fisherman and as a tribute, we have porcelain sconces by Kris Coad moulded from fish.” Above left: handmade Moroccan plates, a print of a 1930s Picasso ceramic piece from Vallauris. Right: a lamp by Marta Bonilla and Asp & Hand glassware atop a Lucy Folk tablecloth. “The daily ritual of setting the table creatively is something we adore.”

Top left: Folk’s workspace with, “incense burning, music playing, fresh flowers or found foliage. It comes with a glorious beach across the road and a lot of sunshine.” Right: Chinese safari hats are slung on hooks next to Nick Fouquet trilbies from Los Angeles from her travels: “A classic beach-house collection of mismatched hats – I love the lo-fi ritual of just grabbing any of them and heading out in the sun. The bags are from my ongoing collaboration with Corto Moltedo and the camera comes everywhere with us.”

Jewellery, clothing and now homewares designer, and founder of her namesake label, Lucy Folk. Her family beach house, built in the late 1980s in Little Cove, Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast. Who: Where: What: Her current creative coastal enclave, where she lives with her boyfriend, their son and now and again part-time residents, her parents.

“I adore the beach and the lifestyle that comes with it. We spent holidays here growing up and there is a very special energy here for me.”

Fred Ganim shelves behind Folk and her son Malon hold treasured objects, including, left, a candle holder from Oaxaca, Mexico, and plate by Softedge in Byron Bay. Bottom left: “Books acquired from my travels. The Book of Symbols is one of my favourites.”