Faye Toogood: Designer of the Year 2025

After Mathieu Lehanneur, Designer of the Year 2024, the Designer of the Year at Maison & Objet 2025 is British designer Faye Toogood. Her Roly-Poly armchair, featuring a soft, embracing shape, was a big hit in 2014, and is the product that gave her great fame as a designer. But her activity is all-around creative, spanning various fields. She explains, “I was born in the UK to a very English family, and we lived in the countryside. My mother was a florist and my father loved ornithology. We didn’t have television, so I read, drew, and we got up early to watch birds. Nature was our playground, I would collect all kinds of things and then spend time arranging them. This still influences my work in the way I use materials. My color palette is inspired by those landscapes.”

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Toogood Showroom, Milan Design Week 2024, photo Federico Ciamei, courtesy Maison & Objet

Faye Toogood: an artist and designer

Design, fashion, sculpture, drawing, interior decoration: these are all different ways Faye Toogood expresses her creativity. After studying art, the designer began working for World of Interiors magazine as a stylist, and then as decoration editor. Since then, she has retained the ability to create sets with simple, inexpensive materials. “It’s easy to work with gold and marble, but it’s more interesting to create something beautiful from a can,” she adds.

Photo Genevieve Lutkin, courtesy Maison & Objet

He has collaborated and collaborates with several design brands, including cc-tapis, Maison Matisse, Calico, Tacchini, and Poltrona Frau. His most recent collection, Assemblage 8, consists of furniture assembled like a children’s construction set. “Assemblage” is a word that expresses Faye Toogood’s approach to design. She explains, “When I started, I had no background in design, only in art. For my first collection, I still had an editor’s approach to materials and geometry. My goal was to bring together the past and the present, the masculine and the feminine, the rough and the smooth, the luxurious and the ordinary. That’s why the first and subsequent collections were called Assemblage.”

Photo Andrea Ferrari, courtesy Maison & Objet

Faye Toogood has also designed several limited editions, and works with the Friedman Benda Gallery, in New York. The limited edition designs are generally criticized, as expensive and nonfunctional. Instead, the British designer explains that designing pieces on the borderline between art and design allows her to express her art. Arguably, without research free of constraints, Roly-Poly would never have been born.

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An icon, Roly-Poly

The Roly-Poly armchair, now in production by Driade in a collection that also includes a two-seater sofa, represented a turning point in Faye Toogood’s work as a designer. The generous, soft proportions were dependent on motherhood for the British designer, who explains, “When I designed Roly-Poly I had just had my first child, and everything had become softer, rounder, and wider. It was a project related to real emotions, so it left its mark. This object also has a childlike approach to the world. I think successful creatives are those who manage to retain their “child” side.

The Roly-Poly, photo Matthew Donaldson, courtesy Maison & Objet

Toogood is her name

Finally, the name, which sounds too good to be true. “It’s a very old surname in the UK,” Faye explains. When I was a child, it was a nightmare, I was shy and embarrassed. Teachers would play word games with it and my classmates would make fun of it: not good enough, too bad, not too good, and so on. Only in my 20s, when I became a journalist, did this signature reveal its power: everyone remembers it, regardless of their nationality. Now I have more confidence in this surname; it suits me. Toogood became a brand. In the studio, I am always amused when someone says: this is not Toogood enough! Well, Toogood, this is me!”

The theme of the year at Maison & Objet is Surreality

“Surreality is the human ability to take creativity beyond the usual boundaries, say Toogood. It’s a very creative theme! As for my pavilion project at Maison & Objet, I can say that the reception in Surrealism will be very warm. I will delve into my eccentric side. Beyond the objects, I will show a creative process.”