After Copenhagen

Three Days of Design left me with 3 thoughts I wasn’t expecting.

I arrived in Copenhagen a couple of hours before Jenna.

For nine years, Jenna and I built Interior Fox together in London, so she has always felt like my design other half. These days, life looks a little different. We both have young children, live in different countries and have pressed pause on Interior Fox while we navigate this season of life.

In the meantime, I have been building Casamar Studio in Milan, a project that has given me space to explore interiors, writing and storytelling in a new way.

Perhaps that’s why this trip felt particularly special.

It wasn’t just a design fair.

It was a reunion.

For three days, we got to do what first brought us together all those years ago: walk through beautiful spaces, talk about ideas, get excited about design and imagine what might be next.

And somewhere between the showrooms, pastries and endless cups of coffee, I came home with a few reminders.

1. Curiosity is still the beginning of good design

One of the highlights of the trip was meeting Louise Roe.

She walked us through her collection and spoke about her work with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you pay closer attention.

At one point, I told her how much I loved one of her benches.

She smiled and explained that the inspiration had come from a parking garage in Copenhagen.

Not a sculpture.

Not a museum.

A parking garage.

She had noticed the shape of a concrete column and the way parts of it had been cut away. Most people would have walked straight past it.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Eventually it became furniture.

I loved that story because it reminded me that designers aren’t necessarily seeing different things.

They’re simply paying attention.

2. Design is becoming a way of life

One thing I noticed throughout Copenhagen was that many brands weren’t simply displaying products.

They were creating entire worlds.

Louise Roe had a café.

Audo had a café.

&Tradition had a café.

Showrooms served pastries, coffee and drinks.

There were flowers everywhere.

Books.

Conversations.

Moments to sit and stay awhile.

Furniture wasn’t presented as something separate from life.

It was woven into it.

I found that incredibly inspiring.

It feels as though design is moving beyond objects and becoming more connected to hospitality, wellness, food and community.

People aren’t just buying furniture.

They’re buying into a feeling.

A way of living.

A story.

One morning at breakfast, I complimented a woman on her top.

“Thank you,” she said. “I designed it.”

Of course she did.

The top incase you wanted to see it, by Schickimiki

That interaction somehow summed up the atmosphere of Copenhagen perfectly.

Creative people making beautiful things and sharing them without pretension.

3. Keep something for yourself

The final thing I brought home from Copenhagen wasn’t a design lesson at all.

It came from a conversation over dinner.

Jenna and I found ourselves sitting next to two designers named Betsy and Kyle.

Their children are in their twenties.

Ours are still very young.

At some point the conversation turned to work, motherhood, creativity and the challenge of trying to hold all those things together at once.

Kyle shared a story from when her children were young.

She remembered being at a dinner party and realising she didn’t really have anything interesting to contribute to the conversation.

Not because she wasn’t interesting.

Because somewhere along the way she had become so focused on everyone else that she had stopped nurturing the parts of herself that made her feel alive.

The lesson wasn’t to work harder.

It wasn’t to become more successful.

It was simply this:

Keep something for yourself, no matter how small.

A project.

An idea.

A hobby.

A dream.

Something that belongs only to you, and be interesting!

I’ve thought about that conversation a lot since coming home.

Perhaps because I think many women know exactly what she meant.

As we get older, our identities expand.

We become responsible for so much more than ourselves.

And somewhere underneath all of that, we still need to remain ourselves.

Three days later, I came home with hundreds of photographs.

Curtains.

Flowers.

Coffee shops.

Door handles.

Colour palettes.

But the things I’ve found myself returning to are much smaller.

Reunions.

Design inspiration from mundane everyday things.

And a reminder to keep something for myself.

Not a bad souvenir from three days in Copenhagen.

P.S. If you’re looking for my actual design observations from Copenhagen, including the curtains, flowers and spaces that caught my eye, you’ll find them over on instagram.