Matilda Goad — meet London’s interior design queen

Stepping into Matilda Goad’s studio in Kensal Rise is a bit like peeking into Santa’s Grotto a few days before Christmas, with elves rushing about wrap-around games for young children. Only here, Santa is an incredibly chic interior designer, cavernous scents like Diptyque Cyprès and elves of classy West London girls making orders of elegant ceramic candle holders, pastel beeswax candles and polished striped picture frames.

It’s no surprise that Goad is off her feet in the run-up to Christmas. The 32-year-old jumped into the relatively untapped Insta-interiors scene with her eponymous homeware brand in 2016 — launching with a single lampshade. Raffia with a whimsical scalloped edge, the design was an instant cult classic and the name “Matilda Jawad” has become synonymous with a certain type of costly eclectic lifestyle (see also: Pandora Sykes, Laura Jackson et al). “Today lamps are selling better than they have ever been,” Goad says. “Monthly they sell more and more. We’ve teamed up with Liberty and some different color combinations. I really hope the classic design stands.”

Five years later, with 126,000 followers on Instagram, celebrity fans including creative director Alex Eagle and designer Margherita Missoni, a line of New Year’s due hardware (knobs and knobs), a major top-secret furniture collaboration in the works and plans to expand into the United States, Goad in meditative mood; It all began in her bedroom—stacked with boxes of lampshades—and twice-daily trips to the post office in Minnea, to send her creations to budding clients. “I could only fit about five boxes in my Mini, so I had to make multiple trips to the post office,” she says. “It was more of an organic formation of the brand, and I had no end goal in mind. Instead, I relied on a lot of advice from friends and all the wonderful people in my life.”

Her early clients included her mother, Emma Jawad, 67, a former fashion designer who got her start as an assistant in the 1960s for legendary “King of the Kings Road” designer Ossie Clark. And the best friend of the Hannah Welland Shrimp Foundation. “Hannah was one of my first fit clients and she has been very loyal and supportive over the past five years,” she says. “She’s also a new mom like me and we’ve really been through it. When I have moments where I don’t know how to become a founder, she has been supportive and she’s been someone to turn to. It’s really nice to have a close friend.” It was Goad who commissioned Weiland to design her gorgeous English rustic Instagram wedding to brewing heir Arthur Guinness in 2018. With her signature to a clever group, Goad transformed an old gardener’s home on the grounds of the Wiltshire family home, Belcombe Court, into a pop-up pub plaza called The Arthur’s Arms are complete with vintage Guinness beer mats, vintage bar stools, and vintage Guinness posters that the Portobello Market Horse and eBay have scoured. Guests included former Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, model Laura Bailey, and designers Molly Goddard and Penelope Chivers.

That her inner circle is so elegant, it comes as no surprise. Goad got his start in fashion, studying art at Camberwell College of Art before working as a designer at Russian Vogue, Wonderland and later helping fashion director Venetia Scott at British Vogue. She has continued to deftly marry her first love of fashion with her new, all-encompassing passion for interiors, as well as curating food collections for Matchesfashion.com and creating fixtures for brands like Racil, Shrimps and Soane.

The lucrative Insta-interior space (Goad’s products start at £7 for a box of fixtures and go up to £280 for a lampshade base) is becoming crowded, with independent designers and e-commerce sites dedicated to homeware popping up seemingly weekly. Fashion influencers, who have made enough money to buy and renovate beautiful London homes, create internal accounts documenting every paint sample from Farrow & Ball and the brass radiator valve. So, is it difficult to cut out the noise? “She definitely feels more competitive than when she started, and that’s something I realize,” she says. “Likewise, I remember being totally unwelcome in the industry five years ago because I didn’t come from an interior design background. The industry was very traditional with a very unvariety crowd and a lot of things to avoid. I remember a woman who was terrified of lampshade design, but I was Ready to put up the rule book.”

Away from her homeware empire, Goad has been busy renovating a three-story house in west London that she bought with her husband, Tom Corbett Winder. “I’m fortunate that my husband has a construction company that has gotten rid of a lot of stress,” she says. “We did it on a big budget and so far, four years later, we’re still finishing things up. That’s what I find exciting: it’s constantly evolving. I love moving rooms and giving them new energy. We’re never done.” This transformation of the series is documented in House & Garden and is described as “New Country”.

During last year’s lockdowns, as everyone became obsessed with restoring the bleak four walls they were stuck inside and Goad’s business boomed (“our sales skyrocketed”), she gave birth to her first child at home in May 2020 – a baby girl named Domino. “For me, it felt like the most natural place to give birth to my baby and I felt safe there,” she says. “I was so happy at home, it was so cold. I turned on the music and candles and I was eating, then I put my daughter in my living room, and she was in my bed twenty minutes later. It was really magical.” She understands that many people are concerned about the safety of giving birth at home – including her mother. “I actually didn’t tell my mom who I was so close to because it was a real concern. I didn’t tell anyone. Then my husband sent me a picture of a domino in my bed and my mom was like ‘What?!’

To celebrate five years since the lampshade that launched her career, Jawad worked with photographer Isaac Marley Morgan to create a visual love letter to London – the city where it all began – that includes shots of her beloved lamp in a black taxi, the post office where she used to mail her orders and her pub. My favourite, the cow in Notting Hill. During December, 10% of sales of every scallop lampshade reflector sold will be donated to St Mungo’s homelessness charity. As for the next five years? “I am ambitious and mobile and when I know when I want it is in sight: we want to become a global brand.”

“It’s all about adding layers to the house and not buying everything from one location,” Goad says.

I love finding things that have a story on the holiday. I have a glass lantern outside my bedroom that I bought on the side of the road in France and it sat between my legs on a Ryanair flight home and it didn’t crash. very fun.

Kempton Market – the second and last Tuesday of every month at Sunbury on Thames – really cool. Ardingly in West Sussex and antiques market in Bath are both great too.

Amazing gumtree. But you have to be excited about it and great things go fast.

Labor and Wait (Shoreditch) and Tinsmiths (Ledbury) are great for timeless staples.

There is a lot of wastage in interiors, especially with fabrics. There is a great website called Haines Collection that sells fabric pieces by really great designers for very little price. Also try cool fabrics.