The World of Interiors

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The World of Interiors

Editor’s Letter • October 2025

ANTENNAE

What’s in the air this month

Real Festival Goers • Whether it’s a floor-filling rug or crowd-pleasing console, these new releases by the London Design Festival’s headline acts look like hits in the making. Rave on, says David Lipton

Inca, Tailored • In the 1960s, artist Sheila Hicks pitched up at a crunch meeting wearing a natty suit sewn by herself in a South American-inspired cloth woven by her own hand. Like its maker, who’s still on a roll at 91, that very fabric would soon hit the big time – as a Knoll-furniture faithful that, after a relaunch and a new name, is looming large again.

Tile Over Substance • Steered by one woman, former addicts in London’s East End have landed on something literally constructive to do on their path to continuing recovery – creating classical-looking mosaics, painstakingly made with the community at large, that adorn public spaces with whimsical vignettes of local life. Better tessellate than never, says The Gentle Author

Misfitting Response • Disabled people are adept at devising dynamic solutions to the ‘misfit’ between their needs and the ableism rife in everyday life, whether hacking commonplace objects or pioneering brand-new design initiatives. Such inspired interventions have positive repercussions for society at large too, says Priya Khanchandani.

Joy Stick • A debilitating stroke left Hamish Bowles reliant on a cane to get about. Though initially irked, he came to cherish it. Happily fully mobile again, he recently rediscovered his aid and vows to brandish it anew – with playful dandy aplomb – in celebration of his progress

Double or Nothing • After World War II, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde were hotly tipped for artistic success, along with John Minton. The three seemed well suited and even lodged together, but the odds swiftly worsened – partly owing to twisted personal dynamics – until they had no cards left to play. Ahead of a new exhibition, Robin Muir lays down the pair’s legacy

Patients Rewarded • Over the course of two years, heritage professionals breathed new life into a Grade I-listed wing of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. With surgical precision they gilded, bathed and dusted ill-kept works in the neglected Baroque interior, designed by architect James Gibbs and embellished by William Hogarth. Swapping scrubs for hi-viz, Kate Dyson steps into theatre to witness a miraculous recovery.

Read the Tomb • The busy afterlives of the ancient Egyptian elites demanded so many ritual objects, symbolic images and burial paraphernalia that ateliers of skilled craftsmen sprang up to meet the need. Holly EJ Black marvels at a new exhibition in Cambridge that puts their exquisite, mostly anonymous work centre stage.

Ode to Psychedelia • Peep beyond this anonymous façade just within Paris’s unpoetic Périphérique and you’ll encounter a universe synced to a wholly different beat: Uchronia, a funky design studio whose various lines are laid out among hallucinogenic swirls of orange, purple, acid yellow and searing pink. Gay Gassmann feels the groove.

Prêt à Portière • Sporting a heavy (bullion) fringe, a certain actor looks a right pair as she drapes herself against the wall at this costume party, which we – inspired by her book Jane...