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Spectacle Makers: An interview with Faye Toogood

Toogood is a design studio that refuses to be constrained by any one discipline. Founded and led by Faye Toogood, she and her team create timeless works of unconventional design including but never limited to furniture and interiors. In 2013 Faye and her sister Erica launched Toogood clothing: a sculptural, practical, anti-fashion wardrobe. At the centre of every Toogood project is a restless spirit of experimentation, and a joy taken in process and play.

For Spectacle Makers, Faye and Erica each designed their own frame. Like a piece of Toogood furniture, they were each initially modelled in the everyday materials of the studio—tinfoil and clay. These raw, expressive maquettes were then handed over to Cubitts. How to replicate aluminium foil  or plasticine in acetate? We talked to Faye about her frame—The Tinker—and the coming together of Cubitts and Toogood in the workshop.

Interview by

Henry Whaley

#Interviews

'I love aluminium foil and would like to cover the whole studio in it.'

C What are your principles for making at Toogood?

F Making and sculpture is at the core of everything we do here at Toogood. We like to use honest, raw materials and celebrate their beauty. There is great nobility, and endless potential to be discovered in a cardboard box. 

C You emphasise the importance of the term ‘making’ rather than ‘designing’ – why is that?

F We think with our hands and our heart. Toogood create using sculpture first… designing is secondary. We are free from the dogma that bogs down conventional design. 

C What’s the making process at Toogood?

F For furniture—maquettes and models are made before any drawing takes place. This is the same with fashion—Erica goes straight to scissors without a drawing or sketch. We strive to work in an instinctual way, imbuing the objects we are making with part of ourselves.

C What were you looking for in a spectacle frame?

F I am personally looking for something that will allow me to play with identity. Clothing is always an opportunity to play with the volume, proportions and silhouette of my own body. Spectacles offer the same invitation to shape-shift. I have worn glasses since I was five years old. I hated wearing them at that age but now I choose frames over contact lenses. They are part of who I am. I have a drawer full of them and depending on the day and my mood I will wear the frames that feel right in that moment.

The ones we have designed for this project are exactly the glasses we would like to wear but can’t find anywhere. Their materiality, tactility and forceful geometry capture everything Toogood is about.

Faye's spectacles among tin foil tinkerings.

The Toogood 'Dough' collection of ceramics.

C Why were weight and texture important?

F Everything that Toogood does is playful. Playing with scale, materials and form. But also playing with, poking and up-ending pointless social norms. Don’t be passive. Play.

C What is it particularly about rough surfaces, indentations, what some would call ‘imperfection’ that interests you?

F I have the greatest reverence for the thumbprint of the maker. The scribble or stroke or scratch that holds the heartbeat of the moment of creation. It’s what makes us human. The best of us. Who wants to be a machine?

C Why is physical model making important to your practice?

F It is the starting point - to go straight to 3D. It is a process both practical and electrically experimental. 

Faye and Erica Toogood, wearing their spectacles.

'The Tinker' ensemble, and a Toogood Roly-Poly chair.

C Was there a particular material you were looking to emulate?

F Aluminum foil. I love aluminium foil and would like to cover the whole studio in it.

C Who would wear these spectacles?

F Anyone, everyone.

C Tell me about the jackets you’re making to accompany the spectacles.

F The synergy between object and clothing is really beautiful. Making the jackets completes the gestalt. 

C Tell me about your own relationship with creativity.

F Creativity is my life force. Without that pulse of raw creativity, sticking my thumbprint into something squishy… I would wither away into nothing.