In my 5+ years of writing about interiors, I’ve come across a fair few homewares and furniture brands, but one, in particular, I can’t get out of my head. I mean, the pieces from it. I mean it when I say, I want to buy everything from it. It’s Fenton and Fenton.
Fenton and Fenton was started by Lucy Fenton in a small store in Melbourne’s South Yarra in 2018. While Fenton says her many travels helped to inspire her to start the business, it was a trip to India where she felt crafted by beautiful wares and their colours and craftsmanship that she can pinpoint as the lightbulb moment.
“I wanted to create a space where I could house unique, bold, colourful pieces, sourced from near and far,” she says. “We sourced products from around the world as well as from local suppliers. Very quickly, representing Australian artists became a passion and a huge part of the brand.”
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Today, Fenton and Fenton has a showroom in Prahan, as well as its online store, which Fenton says has become the backbone of the business. The brand stocks everything from décor, artwork and rugs, to dining chairs, bar stools and side tables.
Pieces come in bright colours like raspberry, orange and, in the case of the Wild Child Bar Cart, holographic aquamarine. The materials used are bold and varying too – think cinnamon-coloured, faux shearling stools, glass oracle sculptures in rose and ruby, and marble scalloped trays in verde or rose.
“We curate unique, bold, colourful interiors — we offer pieces you won’t find everywhere else and we don’t follow the trends,” says Fenton. “Our products are not mass-produced, and we offer a diverse range of price points as we want to have something for everyone.”
Fenton says the brand’s ethos is ‘life is too short to be ordinary’, which she interprets as living life to the fullest and surrounding yourself with things and people you love. It’s also about being true to yourself and your own individual style and buying things you love and that make you feel good, she says.
“The beauty of Fenton and Fenton is there is no set style, era or aesthetic, there are no boundaries,” she says. “I believe in mixing eras and style, and this has allowed us creative freedom when buying and designing new pieces for the collection.”
Some of Fenton’s favourite pieces of all-time include her bone-inlay furniture range, which has been stocked since the brand opened, though the colours, styles and designs have since evolved. Also among her top picks is the Weekender Sofa, which only recently launched, but was two years in the making. “I love the cool, 70s-inspired design, and we are really proud of the quality,” she says.
Finally, Fenton says she loves the Italian Ceramics range, particularly the collection she created in collaboration with Patrizia Italiano on my trip to Sicily last year. Italiano’s pieces pay homage to the traditional Sicilian ceramics, but still have her own contemporary aesthetic and were handmade in her studio in Palermo, Fenton says.
“Inspiration can be found anywhere and sometimes where you least expect it, but travel has been the major source of inspiration for the pieces we create,” says Fenton. “I have spent a lot of time in India and the colours, landscapes and artisans have influenced a lot of what we do at Fenton and Fenton.”
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