Tasked with overhauling the Casely-Hayford fashion store on London’s Chiltern Street, Sophie Ashby, who is married to Charlie Casely-Hayford and founded her interior design practice Studio Ashby in 2014, turned to their own home for inspiration.
‘It sounds disgustingly perfect, but we do have the same style,’ she laughs. ‘It was actually a very normal designer-client process, but if Charlie wasn’t sure – “are we really going to do a fitting room in mustard yellow?” – I could just tell him to trust me.’
With antique and flea-market-found furniture, accessories picked up on their travels, an eclectic mix of artwork and said changing rooms painted in a rich, inviting tone, the space feels like somewhere you could happily spend the day. ‘It’s as if you’re walking into our world,’ says Casely- Hayford. ‘Some of the furniture is from our home, and the mustard colour comes from my parents’ living room.’
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‘A lot of the art is from our personal collection – we’ve literally yanked some of it off the walls,’ says Ashby. ‘It’s a mix that is representative of what we both love and how we like to live.’
The collaboration has somewhat evolved the brand into that of a lifestyle store rather than just the contemporary fashion tailoring it’s known for. Will the pair team up again? ‘We do keep talking about it,’ they say, cryptically. casely-hayford.com; studioashby.com
This article first appeared in ELLE Decoration February 2019
