Aotearoa-born and London-based designer Emilia Wickstead is embarking on a new venture.
Designer to the royals Emilia Wickstead doesn’t believe in saving your beautiful things for special occasions.
“My mother raised me with no plastic on the table, linens at every meal, using the best of everything that we owned
and not saving anything for special occasions,” she tells Viva.
A favourite of Princess Kate and Dame Jacinda Ardern, and the designer behind the latest Air New Zealand uniform, now being rolled out by the airline in March 2027, Wickstead has launched another new venture this year – Emilia Wickstead Home.
Emilia Wickstead and Dame Jacinda Ardern pictured in London last year. Photo / Emilia Wickstead Facebook
Emilia Wickstead designed the latest Air New Zealand uniform collection.
Like her label (worn regularly by Kate and other royals), Wickstead’s homewares collection has an elegant, enduring aesthetic.
It’s a natural and considered continuation of her distinct and cultivated point of view, featuring pieces designed with the same precision in detailing and restraint that defines the house’s ready-to-wear.
Emilia Wickstead Home includes linen custom-made in Tuscany, porcelain plates crafted in France, crystal glasses handblown in Murano, and traditional British silverware created by heritage silversmiths Carrs of Sheffield.
It was only natural for Wickstead to ask her mother, bespoke linen designer Angela Wickstead, to build and run the luxury Home category.
Items from the Emilia Wickstead Home collection.
This new creative chapter is a natural fit for Angela, who’s also based in Britain. She brings a wealth of independent experience to the role, after years working in high-end fashion and elevated homewares.
Angela’s mantra, instilled in her daughter from a young age, is “beautiful things are for everyday life”.
Fashion designer Emilia Wickstead has launched a homewares venture this year.
Emilia Wickstead has had a store on London’s Sloane St for more than a decade.
Born and raised in Auckland, Wickstead moved to Italy with Angela when she was a teenager. She went on to study fashion and marketing at Central St Martins in London and opened her flagship store in Sloane St, London, in 2014. She moved to a larger space in the same street in 2022.
She now lives in West London with her husband Daniel Gargiulo and children Mercedes Amalia, 13, and Gilberto, 11.
Wickstead shares her tips with Viva on how to bring beauty to your home.
Emilia has had the shield motif embroidered on to her Clelia pillow slips to match the colour of her bedroom walls.
Describe your interior style?
I visualise the life I want to lead, then imagine an interior to suit that vision. I have created a home that feels layered but not cluttered, lived in and uniquely ours.
The interior of my home is continually evolving and filled with collectables and pieces that hold deep personal meaning.
In today’s very modern and fast-paced world, I often turn to the past for inspiration and influence.
I love Italian architecture and interiors from the 1800s and I indulge in collecting objects from antique markets. I like to gather things that have nostalgia and memories attached to them, pieces that can be passed down, generation to generation. I find myself dreaming and visualising where something I have claimed as my own once lived.
I love discovering a special inexpensive find. To me, it is the quality, or the heritage of a piece, that makes something valuable.
Are you and your mother drawn to a similar interior aesthetic?
We most definitely are. Our shared aesthetic is absolutely deeply rooted in timelessness and quality. I have learnt everything I know from her. We travel to Italy and gasp at the same details – she trained my eye and taught me to have a strong appreciation for craftsmanship and tradition.
It runs in my mother’s family – her two sisters share this flair for taste-making at home. Through my early lens, growing up in New Zealand in the 80s and 90s, their curtains, light fittings, furniture, upholstery, table settings (not to mention their dinner parties), china and glassware resonated with me.
As a child, their attention to detail and level of decoration throughout their homes had a big influence on me and continues to inspire me to this day.
My mother has a talent for creating an interior that’s exactly the way she visualises it. When I was a child, as well as running a business, she would single-handedly decorate, upholster and often paint walls and plant a garden, to create the environment she wanted to live in.
When I was little, I was constantly moving furniture around in my bedroom and redecorating. And it has not stopped – I’m continually rearranging our furniture at home, which drives my husband and children crazy.
Emilia Wickstead pictured for promotion of her new brand Emilia Wickstead Home.
How has your Italian background influenced you?
Moving from New Zealand to Milan as a teenager was incredibly formative. It was in Italy that I developed a real appreciation for storytelling, craftsmanship and taste. I was 14, the perfect age to be fully influenced by everything around me. I soaked it up, like a sponge, and developed a new way of seeing things that was rooted in a culture that celebrates tradition and quality.
I realised for the first time how a thoughtfully considered brand could communicate an entire message to the world – the imagery, marketing, materials and architecture, right down to the entrance of a building. I understood the importance of creating a complete point of view, and that has stayed with me ever since and continues to influence both my collections and Emilia Wickstead Home.
Emilia Wickstead Home collection.
What’s your signature style for your dining table for dinner parties at home?
Embroidered napkins, tall candles, a white linen embroidered tablecloth and silverware.
What’s your advice to Viva readers who want to create a beautiful table setting at home?
I don’t believe in saving beautiful things for special occasions – linens, china, cutlery, silver, glassware are all to be used. They make everyday experiences feel that little bit more enhanced and enjoyable.
What’s the key to creating a great atmosphere at a dinner party?
Angela had a background in fashion, before switching to homewares. How did that influence you?
From when I was very young, I watched Angela build her fashion business, so design, hard work, chaos, drama and perseverance – and her larger-than-life charisma – were part of everyday life for me. As well as teaching me the importance of garment construction, fit and quality, she also imparted the value of creating pieces that have longevity. This principle has shaped my approach and remains central to everything we do, whether designing a collection of clothing or a collection for the home.
What’s it like working together?
I have complete trust in Angela’s expertise and judgment. What makes our partnership work so well is that we each bring different strengths to the table.
In many ways, our collaboration on the Home collection feels like a continuation of what she taught me many years ago: an appreciation for quality, attention to detail and the importance of investment pieces. She also firmly believes in using your beautiful pieces in daily life.
Have you learned anything new about Angela since she took on this new role?
It has reinforced what I’ve always admired about Angela. She has an extraordinary eye and an instinctive understanding of quality and appreciation of detail, detail, detail – nothing goes unnoticed.
While I always bring my vision to the table, so that I am leading the design and giving it the codes of the Emilia Wickstead Fashion house, we share the same values and taste when it comes to design, which makes our working relationship easy. I am so incredibly fortunate to have an immaculate, fastidious, talented woman with years of experience running this side of my business. It just so happens that she is my mother.
Do you ever clash over anything and if so, how do you navigate that?
We clash over many things, however, bath, bed and table linens we do not.
The Grecia pillow slip – one of Emilia’s favourites from the homewares collection.
Do you have a policy of not talking work at family gatherings or are you so passionate about what you do that it inevitably comes up?
The rule of thumb is that our mother-daughter relationship doesn’t exist at work, yet it should be the only relationship to exist outside of work, and therefore work isn’t a conversation for us at home – but it’s hard to keep to and we fail miserably.
What impact has Angela being directly involved in your business had on your personal relationship?
We’ve always sought out each other’s opinions on all things creative and aesthetic, and brain-stormed decisions, so that’s a big part of our personal relationship. We just happen to be selling these thoughts and ideas now, and we can do exciting things with them.
What qualities do you admire in Angela?
She does not give up. She is a fighter and fighters don’t exist as much in today’s world. I feel lucky to witness that.
What’s your No 1 inspiration when it comes to interiors?
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