THAT’S LIFE: Designer Margaret Howell, known for her pure lines, sturdy British and Japanese fabrics and mid-century minimalist aesthetic, is preparing for an eventful October with a book launch and an exhibition of personal photography at her London shop and showroom on Wigmore Street.
“Margaret Howell Life and Work,” a bilingual book in Japanese and English, will be published by Shueisha on Oct. 22, and features the designer’s reflections on “making, everyday life and the principles that have guided her work” over more than five decades. It looks inside her homes in London and Suffolk, England, and at the furniture, objects and surroundings that have shaped her philosophy and approach.
The book also documents the fabrics and silhouettes that define her collections, and examines how they came into being, and why she continues to reference them. It spotlights the brand’s London workroom shirt-making facility, and longstanding fabric suppliers Fox Brothers of Somerset. It also looks at interiors, objects, archive material and practical details of Howell’s work.
This isn’t the designer’s first book. In 2006 she released “Margaret Howell Houses,” which focused on ways of living through hers and friends’ homes and interiors.
That book is now in its tenth printing, with sales exceeding 50,000 copies. It’s a hit in Japan and a collector’s item around the world, according to Howell’s company which for decades has been majority owned by Japan’s TSI Holdings Ltd.
In parallel with the launch, Howell will also present an exhibition of personal photographs taken over many decades. The show will run from Oct. 23 until Nov. 15 at the designer’s Wigmore Street store.
The photographs span family holidays, Howell’s early Blackheath, London, workroom and her walks along the Suffolk coast. Recurring subjects include grass, washing lines, trees, water, doors, benches and found objects, “revealing a sustained interest in surface, form and the natural world,” the company said.
The designer said she’s inspired by things that are “either unusual or really beautiful. If you can capture that – quite often you can’t .… [If it] surprises you or excites you, you just want to take a photo.”
The earlier photographs in the show were taken on Howell’s Nikon SLR camera, with the more recent ones captured on her phone. Although the images were never intended as source material for her work, they share an aesthetic with her designs, with colors drawn from bracken, shingle, earth, wet bark and the North Sea.
A selection of the photographs will feature in the Margaret Howell 2027 calendar.