BEHIND THE DESIGN
FRIEDA GORMLEY ON HOW HER ICONIC PALM-LEAF PATTERN USHERED IN A NEW DECORATIVE ERA THAT’S STILL GOING STRONG
The inside story of Palmeral by House of Hackney
My husband Javvy and I launched House of Hackney in 2011 on a bit of a whim – after ten years of minimalism and austerity we didn’t want to be in a white box anymore and couldn’t find what we wanted to decorate with that surrounded us with colour and a sense of nostalgia.
It was the era when Ikea was having a big moment with its identikits and at the other end were the luxury fabrics and wallpapers at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, leaving a gap for us. So we left our jobs – I was in fashion buying and Javvy was in product design – and started this crazy ride. As a couple, I knew we’d make a good professional team, although we needed to put a few boundaries in place – stop checking emails in bed and don’t mention work after six o’clock.
Our first collection had a Victoriana mood – dark and decorative. We had just had our first child, so I call those years the baby stage, of both our family and the business. It was tough and humbling – we did everything, dealing with the orders, the purchasing, the customers, the shipping. The brand was built on word of mouth and slowly it took off. We were using our home as a showroom as we couldn’t afford a shop – it was the House of Hackney – and we decorated three rooms downstairs in different patterns so people could visit by appointment. We had this magical front of house and a shabby back of house – it was very much smoke and mirrors!
And then came Palmeral in 2012. It was inspired by a patio print textile from 1950s America, a painterly palm design that I saw framed on the wall of an office. It felt nostalgic but exotic. Javvy drew it up and I designed the colours, those verdant greens. It was the print that lured in the minimalists. House of Hackney was, and is, a backlash to the white wall, and the relative simplicity of Palmeral bridged the gap between minimalist and maximalist. Our movement was not about the feature wall, it was about all four walls. People were getting bolder, decorating spaces like the bathroom or the downstairs loo and as a next step going for the full room.
We launched Palmeral as wallpaper - it was all so cash intensive and we couldn’t afford to make a wrong move with a print. Fabric came once we got such a glorious reaction, then cushions and lampshades. Palmeral spoke to a wide audience – it was being used in beach huts, Scandi cabins and everything in between. We introduced a light Ecru colourway, as well as the darker Midnight and Green. It was during that moment when all of London was painting their homes in the Stiff key Blue, Farrow & Ball’s inky, navy colour, so the deeper shades fitted really well into that as an urban scheme.
We were pretty much the first brand to launch the big palm movement, which became a massive print trend and got copied mercilessly (and ended up on a lot of high-street clothing). We had to run a campaign that said ‘there is only one Palmeral’, because it was being copied so often. We had a bit of fun with it.
Palmeral’s success signalled that it was time to get a showroom, so we moved into our Shoreditch shop at the end of 2013. The first customer through the shop door was Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki and she loved Palmeral. The story of Biba was such a huge inspiration to us, bringing that magic and otherworldliness into retail, so it was amazing that she was literally the first person at our front door.
Palmeral put the brand on the map and opened up the market for us; I’m very grateful to it. The design gets called ‘iconic’ a lot and I always laugh because it feels too young to be iconic, but I’ll take it. People call themselves House of Hackney addicts – I think the addiction started with Palmeral.
House of Hackney, 131 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JE, 020 7739 3901, houseof hackney.com
Palmeral was the print that lured in the minimalists, a backlash to their white walls
“People call themselves House of Hackney addicts – I think the addiction started with Palmeral”