The Moody Blues

Faye Toogood creates environments, lamenting every detail right down to the flatware housed in the furniture she designs. Recently an American couple with an apartment is London’s Mayfair engaged her to do just that – to create a living work of art!

In the small home, Faye Toogood reinvented the idea of Englishness with a palette of inky slates and moody blues. The Victorian period flat is an unadulterated view of Toogood’s theatrical aesthetic: a moody and stylized juxtaposition of Modernist and traditional furniture, country and urban references and a transporting use of colour. Drenching the walls in an almost indigo shade of polished plaster to reflect the thunderstorm low light of London outside.

Toogood also chose to work exclusively with British materials and craftspeople for the project. A made-to-order wall hanging in the master bedroom and woven in shades of sapphire. The alluring cave of a kitchen is constructed entirely of inky slate found in Wales, and the master bath is covered in honey-coloured floor-to-ceiling English silver stone. These more traditional touches are about the wealth and history of an object or room, whether it was made yesterday or 500 years ago.

Juxtaposing the flat’s romantic version of Englishness are contemporary pieces, such as coloured LED rod lights and subversive custom furniture from of-the-moment London designers which give rooms the sense of disruption and tension that is ever-present in Toogood’s work. Very rock and roll.

Story by Nic-Kaiko Follow him on Instagram kaiko_design 

Photographs: Tobias Harvey