PROFILE: MATTHEW WILLIAMSON

The designer on his love for antiques and vintage

Whether considering stock for his new website, designing a room for a client, or updating his homes in Mallorca and London, ‘key pieces’ is Ma!hew Williamson’s mantra. Best known for a successful career in fashion, the phrase couldn’t be more appropriate. However, the ‘key pieces’ he’s thinking about these days are antiques rather than clothes. ‘Antiques bring depth and character to a room,’ says Ma!hew. ‘It’s not necessarily expensive things I’m looking for, but it’s about having those things in the mix. It’s about the poetic layering of things.’

Ma!hew graduated from Central Saint Martins with a degree in fashion and textiles in 1994 and, by the late 1990s, he had become a celebrated designer, recognised for his vibrant colour pale!e and beautifully drawn prints, o"en with a tropical or whimsical theme. By 2003 these prints were moving o# the catwalk and onto homewares. Over the next 10 years, homewares – including wallpapers and textiles – became the focus of the brand, and interior design projects were a natural progression.

Ma!hew says his interest in interiors and antiques came from his parents, who had ‘a passion for decoration and ornamentation in their home’. At the end of 2020, he reached a milestone on

his journey from fashion to interiors with the launch of a new website that incorporates his interior design practice, his branded homewares and his latest venture: an online shop for antiques and vintage pieces.

‘I didn’t want to only have my branded stu ! on the website,’ he says, explaining that he would never design a room that was ‘just Ma"hew Williamson’. ‘It’s the mix of old and new that’s interesting, which is why I wanted to include the antiques.’ Now shoppers can scroll through Ma"hew’s own-design pre"y pleated lampshades to match up with a selection of preloved decorative lamp bases.

This is new territory, he says, and he’s the # rst to admit he is no antiques expert. Consequently, he’s focused on small pieces: lighting, vases and paintings. He’s also brought in Cassie Nicholas of Dig Haüshizzle to help him. (They met when he was a judge on the # rst series of Interior Design Masters, which Cassie won). ‘ We’re yet to branch out into larger furniture, although I’m aiming to get there,’ he says.

What visitors currently see is his # rst foray. ‘I’m still working out what I love, how best to put that on the page to express who I am. What are those key pieces?’ Each room in his London home features several key items of antique or vintage furniture or decorative objects. In the si"ing room, there is a vast antique French mirror and a midcentury chandelier, which he bought in New York. Achieving balance is crucial for a harmonious mix in a room, he says. ‘Personally, I don’t favour schemes that are all of the same world. When a space is over-considered and designed around one genre that’s when I think it becomes either su !ocating or sterile. For me, the perfect interior is a bit eccentric, a bit eclectic,’ he says. ‘That’s where there’s magic.’

Ma"hew takes this approach in his private commissions, although, as he recently discovered with some clients in Mallorca, not everyone shares his appreciation of antique and vintage furniture. ‘They had a preference for modern style and I think prior to my involvement they wouldn’t even have considered a piece of furniture that had been used before,’ he says. ‘But I’ve gingerly worked with them to get them out of that mindset and they’ve now got a home that’s probably 40 per cent antiques and vintage, and they love it.’

It was an Eero Saarinen dining table that helped Ma"hew ease them out of their comfort zone. ‘That was a nice entry point for them, because it was very clean-lined.’ Next came a midcentury wall unit and then an antique chandelier. ‘For me, those are boxticking, classic pieces. They aren’t going to date and I don’t think they’re going to tire of them. They feel like the anchors of the room, and they’ve brought a sort of knowingness to the space. I think that’s the thing with old pieces, they bring timelessness and depth.’ ma hewwilliamson.com

Designer Matthew Williamson, who has moved on from the catwalk to interiors. BELOW One of the small antique and vintage wares that Matthew is selling on his new website. This floral urn costs £155.

ABOVE Matthew divides his time between Mallorca and England. This living room designed for a house in Cheshire has a quintessentially English feel, while still showcasing Matthew’s love of colour. LEFT A 19th-century Dresden porcelain lamp, paired with one of Matthew’s ikat shades.

BELOW Suite 67 at Belmond’s La Residencia hotel in Deià, Mallorca, which Matthew designed. He always incorporates a mix of old and new in his interiors schemes as he feels that antiques help to anchor a room. He would never only use his own designs, he says.