High-street hit Fashion brand Shrimps’ founder Hannah Weiland on her vibrant new range for Habitat

Hannah Weiland, founder of Shrimps – the fashion brand loved for its vibrant colours, faux fur and zany prints – has dug into her design archives to produce a homeware collection for Habitat, which launches this month

‘It’s the first time Habitat has ever used gold thread in a carpet!’ Weiland is talking about the ‘Doodle’ rug (right, £450), her favourite piece from her inaugural interiors collection. Hand-tufted with her depictions of fairytale objects and cosmic animals, then hand-carved to make each creature three-dimensional, it is undoubtedly a showstopper. ‘A spotty horse, a unicorn, a crown, a ring of roses and a moon with stars falling out of it... they’re all things that appear in my dreams,’ she explains.

The homeware range – which comprises cushions, bedlinen, faux fur throws, rugs and framed prints – features motifs lifted from Shrimps’ first five years of collections, which have always been about mixing bold patterns and witty, off-kilter illustrations with rich fabrics and sustainable materials. It was a natural decision, then, for Weiland’s Habitat collection to focus on soft furnishings.

Prawn-pink prevails on the colour-scheme front, but there are pieces that will suit most design tastes, from the subtly checked ‘ Viola’ cushion (£60) to a striped faux-fur throw named ‘Bridget Breton’ (£295) which, as Weiland observes, would ‘add a bit of eccentric luxe’ to a bedroom.

The collaboration makes sense to both brands: with their puffs, frills, beading and voluminous shapes, Shrimps’ clothes are as much sculpture as garment, and Weiland often trawls online furniture store 1st Dibs for inspiration for her fashion designs. Plus, she’s ‘a real home person’ – the walls of her Notting Hill house are painted in sherbet shades to create a backdrop for brighter furnishings, which include a leopard-print chair, an old Marni rug and scalloped lampshades by the designer Matilda Goad. To the same effect, she used pearly pink as the background for a lot of the Habitat pieces, which balances the vivid illustrations.

As the owner of a small, independent British brand, Weiland leapt at the chance to collaborate with Habitat, a high-street retailer that she herself has shopped at for years. ‘It’s been a joy,’ she says. ‘It’s great to bring Shrimps’ designs out at an affordable price point, and it was a nice surprise to find that such a big company still gets so many of its products made by hand.’ Indeed, Weiland’s ‘Faces’ dhurrie rug (£70) is handwoven in India, while her ‘Dory’ and ‘Doodle’ cushions (£70 each) are embroidered using a rare couch-stitch technique.

The collection’s highlight? For the decidedly maximalist customer, it has to be the high-vis, hot pink ‘ Venezia’ bedlinen set, onto which Weiland’s watercolour paintings of scenes of Venice, the City of Light – ‘from a romantic trip there last year’ – have been digitally printed. The cheerful pattern features churches, floating dogs and Venetian jesters. ‘It’s completely mad,’ laughs Weiland. ‘Obviously.’ habitat.co.uk

SHRIMPS’ DESIGNS MIX BOLD PATTERNS AND WITTY, OFF-KILTER ILLUSTRATIONS WITH RICH FABRICS AND SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS