How Did A Pair Of Cousins Change Interior Design In Britain?

One of the most important trends in bespoke interior design is the notion of laid-back luxury, a form of stealth wealth where style emanates from every corner without compromising its functionality or utility at all.

Whilst an explicit focus on laid-back luxury has come into sharp relief in the 2020s and how it changed the relationship we had with our homes, a lot of its core elements were shaped by the early evolution of professional interior design as opposed to architecture and homemaking.

There were several pioneering figures involved in the change, most notably Elsie de Wolfe and her radical transformation of American interior design, but a pair of cousins based at 2 Gower Street began an interior design revolution at the home of what would become a feminist revolution.

The cousins in question, Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, were two of the earliest female architects, and when they opened R&A Garrett in 1874, they became the first two women to own an interior design agency.

At the time, Gower Street was relatively unfashionable, but they quickly changed that perception with a relatively new approach to interior design that stripped away a lot of the excessive ornamentation that dominated interior design until the late 19th century, focusing instead on quality craftwork and pragmatic luxury.

They focused on what they described as “solid and unpretentious” design concepts, which quickly garnered popularity as an early form of laid-back luxury.

The turning point for the cousins was an 1890 interview with Agnes’ sister, the popular advocate for women’s suffrage, Millicent Fawcett.

Whilst the conversation primarily focused on her advocacy work and activism, the journalist spent considerable space praising the “artistic” and “tasteful” interior design that also focused on comfort and function.

These priorities were rare in the Victorian age, which followed a more “show home” approach, and all three of them were pivotal in ensuring equality for women in the late 19th and early 20th century.