Maison&Objet Designer of the Year Faye Toogood on Breaking Fashion and Design Barriers
MILAN — It’s rare that a creative crosses the divide from editorial to design and to fashion so seamlessly. But British designer Faye Toogood has managed to do just that since leaving her role as editor and stylist at the World of Interiors in 2007.
The designer who founded Studio Toogood in 2008 is gearing up to showcase her “Womanifesto: Ceci N’est Pas Une Chaise! (French for ‘this is not a chair’),” an installation at France’s Maison&Objet, the five-day interior design trade fair set to kick off Thursday. In October, organizers tapped Toogood, known for crossing boundaries in interior design, architecture, design, art and fashion, as its Designer of the Year 2025.
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In an interview with WWD, Toogood said the four-room exhibit is a bit autobiographical, depicting just how far she’s come and where she’s going, under the fair’s overarching theme: Surreality.
“I wanted to do something that was surreal and sensual and spontaneous and sexual and all of those things that I’ve been investigating recently. And so I basically want the exhibition to feel quite visceral in a way. And it has ended up being less retrospective and more autobiographical. So it’s some pieces from the past, some pieces that I’m working on at the moment,” she said, adding that the seminal work also celebrates the role of women in design, in line with Maison&Objet’s ongoing efforts to promote women in male-dominated design fields.
In July of 2024, Maison&Objet unveiled the first creative and business network of the design industry dedicated to fostering relationships between women. Woman&Design by Maison&Objet is a business and creative collective that aims to identify, connect and promote women who are pushing the boundaries of product design, interior decoration, craft and lifestyle.
“But it’s really about celebrating women in design at the moment and what that potentially means,” she remarked, highlighting the scarcity of women in architecture and design.
Throughout history, Charlotte Perriand, Ray Eames, Zaha Hadid and Patricia Urquiola are just a few women who have pioneered change in a design world dominated by men. Yet it is only recently that many of their careers and work have come into the spotlight, in an effort to highlight the essential role women have played in the evolution of modern design, both in creative and business terms.
Set to debut Thursday, Toogood’s latest installation explores drawing, materials, sculpture and landscape, themes explored by her latest book “Faye Toogood: Drawing, Material, Sculpture, Landscape” published by Phaeton and edited by Alistair O’Neill.
The daughter of an academic father and florist mother who grew up in the English country town of Rutland and studied art history at Bristol, she rose to the fore with her bestselling Roly-Poly chair for Driade 2014.
In 2012, she launched her clothing line with her sister Erica. Her fashion brand continues to grow and works with around 100 international stockists. In terms of what facet of her business — fashion or design — gets the most attention, she said it varies. “There’s no kind of timetable in that sense. I often describe it as a bit like having children. It’s basically whoever shouts loudest gets the attention,” she said.
In the design world, her studio’s reputation continues to garner international attention. It has collaborated recently with distinguished brands such as CC-Tapis, Calico, Tacchini, Poltrona Frau, and Maison Matisse. Her self-titled collections, which embrace collectible design, are showcased at Friedman Benda Gallery in New York.
At Milan Design Week in 2024, Toogood made waves for re-conceptualizing the type of stately Poltrona Frau armchair the historic, Tolentino-based furniture maker is known for. Through her curated, abstract lens, Toogood envisaged the Squash collection, which she said is like “English folk with Italian horsepower and embodies her soft, sculptural approach.”
For the next edition of Milan Design Week, she’s working on a collaboration with Japanese tableware brand Noritake and expanding her collaboration with Tacchini.
When asked how she broke down barriers in the design world, she said working in creative direction for Tom Dixon after leaving World of Interiors was pivotal to her crossover as a furniture designer. “He encouraged me to start making things for myself. One of the things I realized is that breaking down doors and breaking down the boundaries is something that I feel like my role might be in design. I think it’s perhaps taken… 15, 20 years to work that out,” she said.
Toogood follows in the footsteps of past Designers of the Year, such as Lionel Jadot, whom organizers pinpointed as a solution-seeker for sustainable design materials and practices in the world of hospitality.
As one of the most renowned female figures in British design, organizers said Toogood is a true multidisciplinary artist with a background in art history and who demonstrates “boundless” creativity in design, fashion, drawing, or sculpture, expressing herself with total freedom.
“Toogood shows that today people are jumping from one field to another and there are no limits or walls between these kind of categories as we had before,” said Maison&Objet’s projects and special events director Franck Millot in an interview with WWD. “Today, from fashion to home, from hospitality to workplace, it’s easy, it’s fluent to cross from one to another because, yes, today we are in this situation. And so we show it through the work of Faye.”
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