Our spring capsule collection of furniture and textiles is a collaboration with historic French fabric house Pierre Frey. Founded in 1935, Maison Pierre Frey is famous for making textiles based on a vast and eclectic variety of sources, ranging from 18th-century France to African art. Pierre Frey was an obvious choice to collaborate with, as the family-run maison has supplied fabrics to Soho House for many years, with Soho House Barcelona, White City, Amsterdam and Hong Kong all featuring the distinctive woven designs.
'There is a synergy between Pierre Frey and Soho House,' says communications director and grandson of the founder, Pierre Frey. 'The quality and eclecticism you feel when you enter a Soho House is very Pierre Frey.'
When designing the collection, our design team delved into the Pierre Frey archives in Paris, choosing jacquards woven in a mill in northern France from the Le Manach Toiles de Tours 1928 collection. Playing with the scale and colour of the original patterns, the reimagined designs were used on some of our signature pieces, including the Bamako cocktail chair, Les Perles bed, Zanzibar footstool and Boma, Benin and Congo cushions.
A meeting of minds
'This collaboration is a meeting of minds,' says Soho Home Design Director Siobhan Farley. 'We've enjoyed taking a daring approach while creating a collection that is accessible. It really relates back to the Houses, as they have used so many of the Le Manach fabrics recently. It's bold and fun. We have used Pierre Frey for years and they have so many different collections from traditional to these great Le Manach fabrics we're using in the collaboration. They are a highly regarded fabric house and a great match for Soho Home.'
French accent
Siobhan adds, 'I love the stool and striped cushion fabrics the most, but our new bed shape in the stripe and dot 'Les Perles' fabric is a great statement piece; it's a traditional fabric we blew up to make it modern and fun. All were made for the collaboration, so each is unique. The pieces all work together, whether you have the bed and mix in some scatter cushions, pull in the stool as a dressing table stool, or just have one piece like the Dolly chair in a bathroom or bedroom corner as an accent piece.'
Modern classics
'We have more than 800 different patterns in our collection and Soho Home selected six geometric patterns that have been in our collection for around a hundred years. They were invented by Mr Le Manach in the 1920s and we developed some special colourways for the collaboration. I think these pieces would work really well in contemporary or classic homes - they're eclectic and timeless and bring something very special to a room.'
Put it in print
According to Frey, the collection is the perfect way to try out maximalist interiors in your home. 'Start small with a couple of cushions, maybe a footstool or an armchair with strong patterns, then the rest of the room could still be colourful but with plain textures - velvet, linen, cotton. If you enjoy it, bring in more. You could also go crazy, mix all the patterns and inspiration and prints together. - maximalism is a big trend and it works really well. Or play with plain and patterns together, one to calm down the other.'
