It is the little things in life that Matilda Goad pays the most attention to. ‘I’m a great believer that your surroundings should make you feel happy and grounded,’ enthuses the 33-year-old designer. She launched her business with a scalloped raffia lampshade back in 2017 and now operates Matilda Goad & Co with a team of five, designing everything from cutlery to lamps and picture frames.
Take the recent launch of her frilled, linen, colour-trimmed bathmats and hand towels, as an example of this approach. ‘These have become bestsellers because customers feel that if they’re going to have a shower or bath at least once a day, why not have something beautiful to use rather than everything in boring old white?’ she muses.
This month, Goad brings her ‘utility revitalised, tradition reinvented’ ethos to high-street brand Anthropologie. The new collection includes retro-style barware, lighting, cushions, mirrors, tufted rugs and the designer’s first foray into furniture – a bulbous-based occasional table and a dining chair with a heart-shaped back.
Flexibility was key. ‘I like the idea of people adapting the things I design, because we all have different lifestyles,’ she explains. A bar cart in the style of a butler’s tray, for instance, ‘can be styled up as a little drinks table or used as a side table by the bed or sofa,’ while the ‘Heart’ chair, inspired by a bistro-style design Goad saw at a Paris flea market years ago, ‘works just as well in a bathroom, piled with books, as it does around the kitchen table’.
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The collection’s ‘Swan’ planters – ‘based on the ceramic swans I’ve collected on eBay’ – might be filled with ice to chill a bottle of wine, used as a fun container for loo rolls, or planted up in the garden. ‘Each piece has a use, but hopefully also makes you smile,’ Goad explains over a cup of tea in her new studio, based in The Tay Building in north-west London – it will open as a showroom (by appointment only) this autumn.
With an instinctive eye for colour and pattern, honed while working as a fashion stylist (Goad’s last job before starting her own business was with the fashion photographer Venetia Scott) the designer’s Anthropologie collection resonates with bold combinations of lilac and emerald green or buttercup yellow teamed with cobalt blue. ‘I am always balancing warm and cool colours together,’ she admits. Her love of wicker – ‘such an adaptable, neutral material’ – is also still very much apparent here. You’ll spot it wound around the stem of a cherry-shaped ice bucket or used to top and tail a frosted glass lantern shade.
‘You don’t have to use every colour under the sun to make your home sing,’ adds Goad, who is almost evangelical about the power of accessorising your home. ‘You can have white walls, but layering a bright gingham tray on top of an ottoman or lining a shelf with a row of jewel-hued drinking glasses adds character and soul.’ anthroplogie.com; matildagoad.com
