If you want to see change, you’ve got to be that change — that’s how acclaimed designer Simone Brewster got into crafting from passion, necessity, and visibility.

For the latest installment of Hypebeast Visits, we explore the London-based creative’s process, ethos, and latest partnership with Habitat for its 60th-anniversary collection. Comprised of two Ripple rugs and one Ripple runner, the exclusive home and furniture range sees the designer delve into the brand’s extensive archives to blend her masterful storytelling with its rich legacy for a vibrant offering that plays with textures, depths, and shapes.

“I often talk about my career as an accident,” Brewster begins. “There was a master plan, but I veered off it quite early on.” At age six, she knew she wanted to be an architect. While on a family vacation to the Caribbean, she recalls an indescribable feeling she encountered when entering a building that ignited that passion; unlike the majority of places which were hot, this was cool, and made purposefully by design.

Despite her extensive accolades, she cites completing her undergrad degree as one of her proudest achievements because “studying at architecture school needs mental health warnings.” Her enrolment into the Royal College of Art for an MA in product design was meant to be a brief hiatus before returning to her first love — but she never did. As well as excelling in the practical modules, the course exposed her to a variety of untapped fields such as jewelry, ceramics, vehicle design, sculpture, painting, and fashion, and from there, she couldn’t go back to buildings.

“We didn’t necessarily have everything, so you just do what you can with what you’ve got.”

Curiosity — a key trait that has got her where she is today — is the root of all types of development. “The moment you stop being curious, you stop learning. And that applies to everything,” she tells Hypebeast. “It’s really important to remain curious, allowing it to take you on a journey of personal growth and improvement.” This curiosity widened her horizons to a range of practices that her career is now revered for. Speaking on the inner voice that exists in all creatives she shares, “I’m on this path because I listened to it more often than not.”

Implementing wood is a staple of Brewster’s work — whether it’s large-scale sculptures or smaller ornaments — and it was coming across ebony during a site visit that sparked a memory of the decorative wood-carved pieces around her childhood home. Possessing an authentic connection to the material inspired her to utilize it, however, “the only thing I could make at that scale was jewelry.” Without a background in jewelry design, she dove feet first, applying her existing knowledge from furniture such as woodturning to a new medium. “I always take the knowledge I have instead of waiting or training specifically at the time. It’s a part of how I grew up,” she explains. “We didn’t necessarily have everything, so you just do what you can with what you’ve got.”

The intricacies of craftsmanship are what Brewster embraces and is keen to keep alive. Pivoting to jewelry not only made her realize the meticulous detail that goes into the pieces but also helped establish her design language through one-of-a-kind bracelets, necklaces, and rings as well as traditional wooden Afro combs celebrating natural hairstyles in the midst of its politicization. “It’s through the act of making that I defined a language that could only be made via my hand. My style evolved through making jewelry,” she says, and it’s this handmade touch that extended to other mediums like furniture, painting, and more.

In line with the philosophies of Austrian architect Adolf Loos, which were the antithesis of excessive decoration, Brewster had been mainly working with raw materials — combining, manipulating, and embracing their natural colors and forms to make unique pieces. However, it’s through taking up painting that her prospects were opened up to the use of expressive colors now commonplace in her work. “It’s about how these things interact with each other, and how they encourage me to keep working,” she responds to the question of what her favorite canvas to work on is. “The greatest strides and learnings I’ve had has been because of jewelry. I don’t like working with it as there are so many ways to get it wrong, but it’s extremely satisfying when you finish. And only after painting was I brave enough to start adding my own combination of colors. So each one enriches the next.”

Nonetheless, whichever medium she opts for is approached from a wholly architectural perspective. “Planes, lines, texture, materiality, surface, vistas, openings — all of these are the language we use to create space. I have an understanding of how we bring the different ingredients together,” she says.

“I’m on this journey because there was no representation [...] I didn’t intend to be this person, there was just no other option.”

As well as grasping the theoretical and practical aspect, it’s the value system she holds to the highest importance, and asking Why? is what informs her practice. “The ‘Why?’ is about filling the gap I felt was present in the design field,” she explains of finding her place in the industry. As a Black British woman with African-Caribbean heritage, Brewster’s search for representation in the design world at the time was scarce. After visiting a retrospective exhibition of Chris Ofili at Tate Britain where the painter recalled an absence of people who looked like him in the industry, she realized “you need to make objects that talk to your specific position in the world.”

This soon led to the conception of Negress & Mammy — a chaise lounge and stool set that sees the Black female form presented through her abstract aesthetic. “I shifted my whole mindset and focused this value system into understanding that it wasn’t just about making beautiful things,” she expresses. “It’s about making beautiful, well-crafted things that fill the void.” The Negress & Mammy — the former acquired by The Smithsonian Museum Washington and the latter by the Museum of London — isn’t just furniture. The piece uncovers several layers that explore themes of slavery, the fetishization and objectification of women, and of Black women specifically, and the past and continuing struggles experienced by the Black community.

First unveiled at the London Design Festival, Brewster created it at a time of “feeling like I was this unseen thing. I made this chair that was an object, people would sit on it and she was cut up into pieces.” However, after witnessing its reception, or lack thereof, at its debut, she noticed she had made artwork instead of furniture. “The questions it’s asking are too difficult, and the statement it’s making is too loud,” she says, breaking down its deeper meaning. “If she’s a woman who’s a slave, and she’s cut up and objectified, literally in your house, what happens if you sit on her? That is the question you have to ask. So it’s not just a chair.”

“I’m on this journey because there was no representation. If someone was doing what I did, I’d probably have just applied to work for them. I didn’t intend to be this person, there was just no other option,” she recalls going independent at an early stage of her career. Initially planning to finish her studies and settle at a “nice practice,” her trajectory changed when being enlightened on the value she can bring, and it wasn’t until the widespread access to social media where Brewster was introduced to others that had also been in the same position.

The conversation around visibility in the industry has been ongoing for decades. Whether it’s furniture suppliers, object makers, or culture makers of the world “they are presented in a way that form the western view is the only one of value — and design perpetuates that.” For Brewster, breaking barriers and challenging the narrative is as simple as just being herself, explaining, “I don’t really have to do much more than make my work to test the status quo.”

The idea of design is inherently inclusive, everyone uses it, therefore, everyone needs to be celebrated for their individuality, tap into their experiences, and be able to do so freely without judgment. What’s needed from a wider societal perspective is to redefine the aesthetic beauty standard, as Brewster proves, it comes in all forms, and there’s not one way of doing things because if everyone owns their truth “not everything looks the same — but everything is exciting and new.”

“You have to be willing to make different personal sacrifices to be a creative. If you’re from an ethnic minority background or from a working-class family, these affect the shape of your life.”

This philosophy is incorporated into everything she does — and change begins with the next generation. Outside of her craft, Brewster is also an educator who teaches design to foundation year students, many of which come from diverse backgrounds, and it is these unique perspectives, histories, and heritages that she encourages them to extract from when working on projects. “The fact that we have a culture as rich as humanity is how we define ourselves separate from animals, and we designers, curators, and creative people, create culture,” she explains of how she uses her role to inspire her students to look within for influences. “But if we only teach a narrow lens and act like these are the only people who contributed to the whole of global society as we know it — that’s not how we should teach design.”

Like others from similar class backgrounds who, during their formative years, bear certain responsibilities that take priority over their own journey, Brewster’s is no different. “You have to be willing to make different personal sacrifices to be a creative. If you’re from an ethnic minority background or from a working-class family, these affect the shape of your life,” she exclaims. But one thing she advocates for is living your truth — whatever that might be — and urges established creatives to promote the same because “just as much as representation is important, let’s also be clear about how we get into [the industry]. Considering there are no backdoors and no special connections, it takes time. It’s important to understand that it’s a long game.”

Aligned by a mutual dedication to craft and an innovative approach to design, it was only right for Habitat to enlist Brewster on its exclusive 60th-anniversary homeware collection.

For the designer, the partnership was also a full-circle moment. From admiring its Central London flagship store and collecting its seasonal catalogs to being taught by Royal College of Art professor Tom Dixon — Habitat’s then head of design and later creative director — their crossing of paths was destined. “There’s always been something aspirational about [Habitat], they make beautiful things and I also want to make beautiful things,” she says of the shared values that informed her decision to accept the partnership. “They were the only brand at the time doing what they were doing.”

“Rugs can often serve the same purpose as paintings in a home — they add color and an individual spark.”

Initially tasked with tapping into her newest discipline of painting to create anniversary-inspired artwork, Brewster instead wanted to take on a new challenge: rugs; an item that falls well within the brand’s esteemed homeware repertoire. Delving into 60 years of its archives led the designer to find a harmony between her profound principles, new-found discovery of bold color combinations and the iconic brand’s long-standing heritage to create three pieces that draw equally from their compelling design languages.

Much like Negress & Mammy that transcended furniture to become a piece of art, she didn’t want this to just be a rug; but a tapestry for the home. “I was interested in translating my paintings into rugs because of its function,” she explains. “Rugs can often serve the same purpose as paintings in a home. They add color and an individual spark, and I wanted to translate the narratives explored in my other work into a new medium.”

One thing that left Brewster in awe was Habitat’s rigorous process when creating. Every step is considered with the utmost importance, from the design phase to the sourcing and producing, which exposed her to mass production given her background in intimate commissions and small batch creations.

Inspired by her signature abstract themes reimagining the female form, the medium-sized Ripple rug and runner utilizes texture, depth, and geometry to boast an asymmetrical shape with curves and straight edges incorporating her vibrant color palette. “I wanted the rugs to have different piles to discuss the topography of the form. They’re all at different heights, and when you translate that again, there’s some nice touches in it,” she says.

The influences behind the colors used sparked both entities’ enthusiasm the most throughout the collaboration. Habitat’s nostalgic vibrancy, matched with Brewster’s aesthetic, resulted in a collection that speaks volumes to the design world, and beyond.

This is seen in the larger Ripple rug that draws from the same themes but arrives in a prominent tonal blue hue present in much of her previous works. “We both agreed on the color story. I wanted the blues that feature in my work and they were excited about that as well,” she says. Ultimately, for the designer, the process of uniting with Habitat was a natural evolution, with both working in an authentic synergy to celebrate good design.

Stay tuned on Hypebeast for more on Habitat’s 60th Anniversary celebrations. The full Simone Brewster x Habitat collection is available on the brand’s website now.