Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 39
Occupation: Designer.
Instagram: @holliebowden
Hometown: Gloucester.
Studio location: Shoreditch, London.
Describe what you make: My main practice is making interiors, but I design furniture as well, and I am a manic collector. I’m constantly inspired by what I see and experience around me, and I love filtering that into new things I’m working on which can be super different—houses, shops, restaurants, standalone pieces. With interiors, the whole idea of making has so many parts to it—it’s never one medium or discipline. It’s so inherently collaborative, which always keeps things fresh. There’s that magic time at the beginning of a project when you come up with a concept for how to make a space singular and special, and the space is teeming with ideas and possibilities. But that other part of making is so exciting, when you’re bringing the whole thing down to earth, working out how to realize it. Thinking through materials and composing is as important to me as orchestrating objects in whatever environment we’re building.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: It’s funny what pieces and projects end up having the most personal significance. I designed this bench called Space Cowboy which was made of machined steel and a horsehair upholstered seat for a show at MASA Galeria in Mexico City in 2020. It was a bit of a breakthrough piece for me. It articulated something about what my take on design is about—something fun, humorous, and social, paired with material heft and substantialness. Finding a way of fusing those two sides of myself in this piece created something unexpected, and it was a bit of a game-changer for how I approach my work.
Describe the problem your work solves: A big preoccupation in my work is about the way the present overlaps and bleeds into the past. The way this presents as a design problem that I try to solve differently on each project is finding the right tension between new interventions and the existing context. It’s also about finding the right balance of contemporary pieces with vintage and antique objects. The look I try to achieve isn’t about what’s happening right now—it’s kind of the opposite. I like groups of objects that look layered, well-lived, well-traveled, like they’re part of a collection that has been accumulating over years or generations.
Describe the project you are working on now: A project in Winchester that I’m putting the furniture together for. It’s so lovely working on an English country house. It’s always been a dream of mine to do one because they center around historically formal rooms that you get to reimagine in this loungier, current-day mode. My studio has completely reconceived the interior architecture and we made some amazing interventions that I can’t wait to show. I’m just starting on a new residential project in the Bahamas, which is a dream. It’s the rare project where we had the opportunity to work with the client to select an architect.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: Our first restaurant project is opening in Switzerland later this year, and I’ve never been so excited about a project going live in my career. The planets have aligned on this one—the client is incredible, the existing architecture is pretty wild, and the material palette we’ve put together is really interesting. It’s allowed me to explore a lot of ideas I’ve wanted to develop for some time.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: My studio is a few doors down from Leila’s Shop, so I always have a few essentials from her on hand. It’s all sweet stuff I crave from there, like a lime cordial that I’m very fond of and some hard fennel lollies. The chocolate with Spanish almonds is next level. Apart from the food, I’ve got this huge boss desk by Oswaldo Borsani that makes me feel productive as soon as I sit at it. It’s covered with a changing cast of objects and books, and usually some great flowers. I’m a flower obsessive from a former life as a florist.
What you do when you’re not working: I’m not with my twin girls, then I’m probably doing something work-adjacent, like exhibitions, scouring dealers and antique markets, or poring over old books. I need so much fresh input to stay inspired so it takes up a lot of bandwidth.
Sources of creative envy: It’s funny, there are so many artists and designers I idolize, but it wouldn’t really be right to say I’m envious of them creatively. The one person that comes to mind though, weirdly, is Patti Smith. There is something about the way she described the creative milieu in the ‘70s and ‘80s in New York when you could live so freely and just somehow be in this incredible ferment of the most amazing musicians, artists, and designers imaginable. London now is great, but the Chelsea Hotel in the ‘70s it is not.
The distraction you want to eliminate: There’s this very funny Instagram account @mralistairgreen that I follow religiously. Eliminating him might be a bit much though.
Concrete or marble? Concrete.
High-rise or townhouse? High-rise.
Remember or forget? What’s the question again?
Aliens or ghosts? Aliens.
Dark or light? Dark.
