Henry Holland on Reinvention, Resilience & Home in Two Halves

0:04When I started House of Holland, I was 22 and all I wanted to do was go out every night of the week. When I did start a ceramics company when I was 38, it was the perfect alignment to who I was at 38.

0:14Henry Holland:Staying in. Staying in and looking at the mantelpiece, right? Looking at nice vases and turning on a nice lamp. You know, if people were critical of my work, it literally lights a fire in my stomach to go out and work harder, do things bigger, better. And I think that's something that isn't always healthy. My ability to, like, concentrate and focus is so motivated by fun. I remember my mum having an argument with the maths teacher because he was like, he just doesn't concentrate and he just doesn't focus. And she instantly replied, was like, well, are you making it fun? And he was like, maths isn't fun.

0:51And she went, well, there's your problem.

0:56Home for me is really who's there. Home for me right now is with my husband and my dog. And that can be anywhere.

1:07Henry Holland:Hi, folks. Welcome back to Homing with me, Matt Gibbard. Today, my guest is the lovely Henry Holland. Henry, of course, made his name with his fashion brand, House of Holland, which became known for its clothes bearing cheeky slogans saying things like do me daily Christopher Bailey and let's breed Bella Hadid. More recently he's pivoted to homewares so Henry Holland's studio makes beautiful ceramics using a Japanese technique called nerikomi which gives it a kind of swirling marbled finish. Today I've come to Henry Holland from House of Holland's house, which isn't a house in Holland. It's a house in East London and a very nice one it is too.

1:51Henry Holland:It's a Victorian terrace that he shares with his husband David and their dog Larry the Pug. Henry's busy refurbishing it from the top down so it's a bit of a home of two halves in some ways. There's some lovely bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs filled with his lighting designs and his fabrics, some photos by his friend Martin Parr and various suggestive objects like a glass banana and downstairs is still as he found it with holes in the walls and a pretty manky old kitchen. As it turns out this is a bit of a metaphor for the podcast as a whole. Henry's parents separated when he was young and he split his time between the two households.

2:34Henry Holland:One was ordered and structured while the other one was more creative. And that tends to be how he lives his life. There's the playful version of him that we've seen pictured at many parties over the years, but there's also a deeply determined side that's very much about proving people wrong, which partly, I find out, stems from the bullying he experienced when he was younger. He's not afraid to reveal his sensitivities, and we discussed everything from panic attacks to imposter syndrome, and also the huge disappointment of closing down his fashion brand. He reveals the importance of his friends in his life and he sweetly describes them as his chosen family.

3:14Henry Holland:I really enjoyed meeting with Henry. He's a really, really fun guy and I hope you enjoy this conversation. Hi, Henry. Hi. Should we start with a couple of caveats? Yes. I think we should. Caveat number one. Yeah. You've got the lurgy. I have got the lurgy. I don't often sound this sexy, but I've luckily just saved this for you. I do. I'm coming through the other side of it, but, you know, not sure when this will be broadcast, but we're currently in the midst of the flu nami. Okay, so that's caveat number one. Caveat number two is that we're recording this in a room that is not officially ready for consumption viewing.

3:55I'm not even going to tell my husband we filmed it in here.

3:57Henry Holland:Okay, all right, so it's very good of you to allow us to do it in here, but it's the best place in terms of the set up, the acoustics. Set up, acoustics, daylight, overrode the tens of thousands of pounds I've spent on renovating the upper floors of my home. But you go ahead, guys. I'm just here for your purposes, as you were. Good. All right. Well, let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? So I grew up north of Manchester in a place called Ramsbottom, which is now very chic. and on the Sunday Times Best Places to Live list. Everywhere is. Yeah. It's only 25, come on. And it was a great place to grow up.

4:37I grew up between my mum's house and my dad's house, so I split my time equally. I would change houses every Sunday, but they were both around the same area, like five minutes away from each other. So kind of quite a rural place, but not far away from Manchester.

4:53Henry Holland:So when did they break up or were they never together? or what's the story they broke up when I was around three okay yeah so was it literally one week on one week off yeah yeah pretty much I think um my mum's work meant that she worked away quite a lot so as I got older she would work away more often and then I would stay for sort of two weeks at a time or three weeks at a time just depending on her schedule uh but I did that until I think when I was about 16, 17, maybe, my mum bought a one-bedroom apartment. And so I got the message. Well, we should come back to that because that's interesting.

5:33Henry Holland:But I mean, looking back on it then, what was that like for you having that splitting the time between the two? Yeah, I think for me, it worked really well. I don't know how much you believe in astrology, but I'm a Gemini. I think we just have two very distinct sides. And that applies to lots of different areas of my life. I think in business and in work, I have a very intense creative side, but I also have a kind of more ordered, structured kind of business financial side that I can tap into if I have to. It's my less favorite, but I'm able to. And then similarly with growing up, having those two different environments, you know, they were structured quite differently.

6:11You know, my dad's house was quite ordered. It had a lot more structure. My mum's less so. But, you know, that kind of that worked for me. You know, I was able to kind of manoeuvre into both of those atmospheres quite well. I quite enjoyed it.

6:29Henry Holland:Really interesting. Yeah. Did you have a preferred place to be? Not really, depending on the time. I mean, my sister was at my dad's and so I always enjoyed being there and spending time with my sister. but then me and my mum were really close and so I loved spending time at my mum's so and when it was at my mum's it was just me and my mum quite often and and so I I loved that for for different reasons you know she it was it was really fun so no I like I didn't have a favourite at all um it just they were just different yeah yeah why was your sister at your dad's then I think for her the moving was too much um she's kind of her personality she's less uh she doesn't like change as much she liked routine and things like that whereas I love change and I love things being different and you know moving around and things I find really exciting whereas I think you know as a teenage girl kind of in her early teens she just decided she wanted one bedroom and you know all of her things in one place really is she younger or older older okay is there a sense that you did you feel are you a people a bit of a pleaser in some way that you felt like you wanted to be with both of them in equal measure is there something about that maybe I'm definitely a bit of a people pleaser I've got a song in my head now I'm saying that line we're people pleaser who is that um it's an awful song to have in your head as well it's gonna be there for all day um i guess so but no i just never felt like i needed to choose um i felt okay having the two spaces it worked for me um i loved spending time with my mom and she wasn't there all the time you know she moved and traveled for work and why was she traveling then what did she do her work she was a management training consultant she worked a lot and she um she worked a lot in hotels and she would do kind of training courses off an off-site training courses and then later um when I was about 12 she bought a chateau um in central France and so gradually that became more and more of her work uh and she would spend more and more of the year over in France and so she renovated that from being kind of quite dilapidated chateau that was being kind of lived in maybe four rooms into like 16 suites and it was kind of a wedding venue and a chambre dough and bed and breakfast and so she was out there for the majority of the summer months kind of May to October and that was just a gradual transition I guess as I kind of got through school um and got a bit older so I think maybe when I was about 16 17 she um yeah she bought a smaller place in the UK and spent more time in France and so I would be out in France to see her on holidays and you know do my A-levels.

9:19Henry Holland:Was that okay though that you saw less off her at that point? Yeah yeah it was fine um it was fine yeah I mean it was it was it was it was absolutely fine fine sounds like I'm kind of denying that it was fine it's fine I know I'm like I need to think of a better word it was great because when I did spend time with her it was for elongated periods and out in front so it was my holidays it was my summers and easters and christmases and they were just really special times for different reasons yeah um am i right in saying that she also did some sort of meditation work as well yeah she did so she um she kind of went on a really holistic spiritual journey that started with her first breast cancer diagnosis which was when i was around eight um and she went to vishpashna which is a really intense five-day meditation uh course where you can't speak you sleep on straw mattresses you meditate eight hours a day it's like a really intense uh process and she did that um and ever since after that she would meditate every morning so i'd come down and get ready for school and she'd be sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room under a shawl and scared the shit out of me in the dark um and then that sort of really started a kind of more holistic approach to her kind of health and medicine and then she got really into aromatherapy she was always into homeopathy I remember from being really little I was um my head for my hay fever I was always on uh pollens and grasses so I would take early spring to kind of build up my resistance for later in the summer but then that kind of just evolved and got more intense um i think when she started that more holistic journey uh from me being yeah kind of eight to ten years old yeah did she teach you how to meditate bits bits so she used to do um she did the silver technique as well she would teach me what's that this technique where you sort of hold the the sort of the three fingers of your two hands together and then when you close your eyes you look down it feels very unnatural so like when you close your eyes your eyes naturally look up to the sky but then if you took if you look down I think it's called going to center that was something she taught me um positive affirmations with Louise Hayes she would teach me uh manifesting she taught me she wrote books about living like positive thought and you know power of the mind as well um she had a book called living positively with Stephanie Holland yeah so there's kind of a real belief system um that she kind of instilled in me so practically how would you manifest something so practically manifesting really is just about like really seeing and believing what it is that you want it's not about sitting back and waiting for it to happen and by any means you know I think there's some people that have this resistance to the manifest manifesting is a term that they think people just think if they manifest it it's going to happen but it's really about like really believing that you can for me it's more about believing that you can achieve what it is you set out to achieve and manifesting that and manifesting the finished results um and I think when you look at my career and the fact that I started a fashion business with zero training at 22 and no clue and 200 pounds in my pocket and then again at 38 I started a ceramics business after having three evening classes I guess that is a reflection of my ability to be able to kind of believe that I am able to achieve the things that I set out to achieve.

12:58It's not about an arrogance by any means, because I definitely, you know, work really hard to achieve the things that I set out to achieve. But I think one of the biggest roadblocks for so many people is a lack of belief in themselves that they can do certain things. they'd be like oh I could never do that because of x y and z I just haven't had that internal saboteur voice to the same level because of the belief system that I was brought up on that's great I think yeah it's a real gift it's a real gift isn't it okay so sounds like your mum taught

13:35Henry Holland:you a lot on that front what about your dad what do you take from him do you think so I learned so much from my dad as well my dad had the same job from I think from graduate he you know he's a lawyer he was a conveyor so he ran his own company he ran his own business and you know just understanding what that meant to work for yourself and you know that having a job wasn't necessarily just about a nine to five it was about building something and growing something and you know working around that to to make that happen I think I've got a really strong work ethic And also, you know, my dad doesn't necessarily practice manifestation or positive thinking, but his unwavering belief in me has also allowed me to continue on that path.

14:26you know when I was 22 and I started how to follow my fashion company my parents had put their pensions into a flat for me and my best friend to buy and so rather than pay rent we would just pay the mortgage and then everyone got their money back with the increases and everyone did really well out of it by the way um but you know even though my parents had put their money into this this house and so I had a mortgage and I found my dad at 22 and I had a full-time job in magazines and I was like I'm giving up my job to make these t-shirts that say flick your bean on them he was like great go for it you know I think that he's never questioned my decisions you know he's always been really um really encouraging in anything that I've set out to do and then when you know I went through an administration and my fashion business was sold off you know both him and my stepmom were just so encouraging and so reassuring they were like we're not worried about you you're going to be fine you know and like when I had those moments where I could have potentially gone into a moment of self-doubt and pity and misery of like oh everything I've worked for has gone away and you know I've failed or whatever you know it was their voice just saying you're going to be fine honestly we we have this we completely believe in you and I think that what I learned from them is that whatever it is that I set out to do as long as I try my best at it and you know I set out to do it well then go for it really.

16:04Henry Holland:So a lot of the people I talked on the podcast they they talk quite similarly about parents who instilled in them certain values and they've taken through and helped them be successful often they also talk about some kind of adversity that they had to deal with when they were young as well or instead of in your case can you pinpoint anything on that front I mean what was the most sort of difficult time of your childhood do you think um the most difficult time in my childhood was me being bullied for being gay at an all-boys school I went to a very traditional all-boys school when I was about eight years old um we had to call the female teachers sir Seriously?

16:44Yeah. This is in 1990, I guess. And the female teachers were like, oh, it's just easier. There's only a couple of us. Because, like, accidentally you'd be like, oh, sir, oh, sorry, miss, you know. They'd be like, we called female teachers, sir, which my mum being a massive feminist was really struggled with. But it was the school that all of my family went to, my dad, My mum went to the same school, but there was separate boys' schools and girls' schools, and they were very kind of culturally very different, the boys' school and the girls' school. So it was a boys' school of like 1 ,200 boys pretty early on, as is often the case.

17:24The bullies figured out I was gay before I did.

17:27Henry Holland:What age are we talking here? I was probably, I was my first year in senior school, so 11, just 11 going into 12. And I really struggled with that. and I kind of really went insular. I really went in on myself. Again, it's thanks to my parents that really recognised that that wasn't right for me. It was, you know, it was a challenge for my dad in a way because it was like a tradition, it was a tradition that all of us went to the same school, but it was actually my step-mom and my mum who, you know, really encouraged him to let me move to a different school And so I moved to a much smaller school, a bit further away, but I was a big fish in a small pond and that just suited me really well.

18:14And I was just really able to be myself. And on the first day of that school, I met my best friend who is still my best friend to this day, who I ran my fashion company with for 15 years together. So it was a really special place where, you know, I was just able to be who I was.

18:31Henry Holland:So you said that the bullies figured out your sexuality before you did. So talk me through that. I mean, I guess so. I mean, before I was ready to or willing to, you know, I guess it's, according to terms of being gay is not something. I didn't struggle with it that much, really, to be honest, because, you know, like everyone in my mum's life was gay. Like all of my mum's friends were like David and Justin. It wasn't like Anne and Phil. so like you know whenever my mom's friends came for holidays or christmases or you know dinner parties it was definitely not um you know a heteronormative environment by any means if anything it was like you know it was a bit too easy you know like i think when you're when you're coming to terms of being gay so you're always kind of you build it up in your head that it's like a much bigger deal for everybody else than it is and they pretty much they already know and they don't care but you kind of build up into this sort of thing that's kind of makes you panic so i i came out about 17 18 but only didn't come out sooner because i almost didn't want to give my parents the satisfaction of being right do you know what i mean like when you're an 18 year old you don't want to like give your parents like the justification but it is just a worry you know it's this secret that you're carrying i guess yeah um but and sort of when i was in that all boys school a really masculine environment you know it was all about football it was all about army cadets it was a very traditional environment and then when i did find my parents recognized something was wrong i was you know becoming really quiet and insular and you know they went to the school to talk about it i told them that i was being bullied and the headmaster paraded me around the school with him to point out the bullies like it's just not how that hopefully that's not how that is managed in today's world and i'm so glad that it was pre phones and social media because i don't know how i would have dealt with that but um yeah they just they didn't really manage it very well and um so yeah i went which was a real blessing and i went to a much uh a much better environment where I was encouraged to be myself and I felt comfortable to be myself and it was less academic which I guess is one of my dad's concerns um but but you're happy I was happy yeah and I got enough to get to do I got enough to do my A-levels and then I got enough A-levels to go to university so what else is there the bullying period um how do you reflect on that in terms of has it has it sort of contributed to anything do you think or yes it definitely has contributed to a inbuilt incessant need to prove people wrong if i think they don't believe i can do something it's a bit like i need to prove those bullies that i can achieve whatever it is i want and then i think you know later working in fashion or working in any creative field to be honest when your work is critiqued and reviewed and yet it's an objective point of view whether something is good or not then that that kind of fight was reignited you know if people were critical of my work or if people are critical of me ever it literally lights a fire in my stomach to go out and work harder be you know do things bigger better harder faster and prove them wrong really and I think that's something that isn't always healthy you know I couldn't often work myself to sound like this pretty much this time of year every year my body gives up just two weeks before the holidays yeah like I almost get there and then your body my body's like nah too far yeah but yeah so I don't always kind of look after myself as much as I should because I'm trying to there's a need to prove something to myself as well i think as well so interesting isn't it but i almost i'm always thankful for that are you that that fire yeah like i'm almost thankful like that period i remember that period being so dark and so miserable and thank god it was only about a year of my life and that again is thanks to my parents you know for recognizing that i needed to be somewhere else and allowing me to do that and I'm so grateful um but at the same time it did really instill in me this need to like a real like I'll show you kind of thing and I think that has been reflective of my career throughout the years yeah I can see that that makes a lot of sense where did your interest in fashion come from i was always obsessed with fashion um from being from as for as long as i can remember um when i was really little because i had the two homes my parents we would go shopping and i'd buy my clothes were always bought in outfits so everything always had a corresponding top and the bottom or like the t-shirt with the matching shorts or the jumper with the matching trousers or whatever.

24:00And whenever we were buying me clothes, I'd buy everything twice. So I'd have one set at my mum's house and one set at my dad's house. And then obviously as you get older and you have more personal choice and personal style, you want to buy your own things and you get your own allowance and pocket money, whatever. So then I would start to move my clothes with me and I would just go into the wardrobe and just gather all the hangers, just like squish them all together and then place them in the boot of the car and then get to the next house and hang them back up it take i've got it down to like a fine art literally i could swap out it'd like take me 10 minutes and so i don't know just from really early on i recognized the power of fashion and its ability to kind of connect you to the people you wanted to be connected to in terms of style tribes in schools and as a teenager you sort of dress to to attach yourself to the tribe you want to be attached to right so I was a skateboarder wear lots of baggy pants and wallet chains and hoodies when I was like about 13 14 I used we grew up next to a dry ski slope so I used to go snowboarding as well like two nights a week and so that was kind of our style um I don't know I just I just really loved fashion from from being you know my earliest memories would be like going shopping with my mum and my sister and like being so excited to like run off by myself and find them a pair of shoes to match the skirt that they just bought typical little gay kid running around Martin Spencer's trying to look for a court shoe in a primrose yellow pretty much but um but then when I started to think about what I was going to study um I got some really good advice from a friend of my mum's he said you know I was like I kind of want to do something in like fashion and media and it was when media studies was like first a thing but then there was this real thing of like media studies isn't a proper degree or whatever people were quite like you know dismissive of it um and a friend of my mum's who was in that world she said why don't you do a journalism degree because then you're learning a skill that you can apply to any sphere in the future you can write about sport you can write about never gonna happen you can write about fashion you can write about architecture you can write about travel anything you want to that you'll later you know figure out is what you want to you know the the world you want to be a part of then journalism is a really good route to any of those things and I thought I was looking back and really amazing

26:33Henry Holland:advice I'm really grateful for it so I did do that and I did a journalism degree and then in my head a journalism journalism encompassed you know writing for the face and dazed and confused and id and that was my world of journalism and then i went to my first week of lectures and it was about theology and politics and the lecturers were like when you go and work for the local newspaper and work your way up to the news desk and then you eventually start to work work on the features department at the guardian and i was like oh god made a mistake and so i tried to move to a fashion course after four days four days because I was at the I was at the London College of Printing which is part of the University of the Arts so it was Centre of St Martins London College of Fashion London College of Printing and another one I think which is now London College of Communications and uh I was in these halls of residence and the halls were some students were from St Martins some students were from London College of Fashions in my flat so I was surrounded about his fashion students and then was just like hang on all these people are doing fashion and like some of the people doing fashion weren't even into fashion as much as I was and I was like I'm doing the wrong thing here and so I tried to change my course and um the course director was like it's too late you know I'd love to meet with you and talk about this but come back next year and I'm far too impatient that's another thing you know when I set my mind to doing something I'm hell bent on doing it until it's achieved and so I was like I'm not waiting a year I'll just get on and do this journalism degree but I will do everything that I can around that to build fashion credentials so I set about emailing and contacting anyone that I had any sort of route to to literally be an intern to work with them um in the fashion sphere and so around my degree I was doing all of these different internships I did an internship at Fairchild I was like W and Women's Wear Daily I was like a stylist assistant for someone that used to work for like Dazed and Confused and then I found myself as a fashion assistant intern at a teenage teen magazine called Smash It and Sneak and never left basically fell in love with it um fell in love with the team fell in love with the people that was working there some still some of my closest friends but just the idea of working in the world of fashion but in this space that wasn't too serious that didn't take itself too seriously um and then after a few months my boss left to move jobs and I think I was 21 and they interviewed me for the fashion editor job so while i was uh throughout my degree sorry i was working two days as a fashion assistant okay for my final two years and then i did my last exam on the friday started full-time at the magazine on the monday so straight through into work okay didn't have a day off it was like i remember going to get our results for our degree and then going into the office in the afternoon and everyone being like how'd you do but i was already working full-time That's brilliant, isn't it?

29:55Henry Holland:Yeah. You mentioned the word friendships there, and I wanted to ask you about friendships. Yes. Because that seems to me such a key ingredient of who you are as well. Huge. So a very good friend of yours, Agnes Dean, the model, was, correct me if I'm wrong, but seemed to be the face of that whole moment, that sort of generation. The face of Indie Sleaze, it's now been coined. Indie Sleaze. Indie Sleaze wasn't really a term back then. but she have a real moment in time for sure cultural moment in time cultural moment in time so how did you meet her um so we met agnes she used to work in the chip shop in the village next to where i grew up uh we met through friends at about age 13 i think you know when you go to like the local nightclub when you manage to blag your way in at 15 we used to go to the same nightclub you know like underage drink in the same pubs and things like that and I was always kind of like I think you should be a model and I was like really in that sort of into the sort of fashion scene I was always encouraging her to try out for being for doing modeling stuff and then she got an agency up in Manchester when I had just started at university so she used to come and share my single bed when she got jobs down in London and then after my second year at university we moved in together and lived together in London so she was sort of a jobbing model in London and I was doing my third year in my degree and then we bought a house together and then lived together until she moved to New York in about 2009 I think yeah so um like really close friends but like my my entire world is built on my chosen family for sure again that's something that I really learned a lot from from my mom I think she really instilled in me the importance of friendships and how people are more than that chosen family you know I don't have I don't have any issues with my family family you know we love each other and we get on really well but my chosen family is just as important to me and has been so pivotal in my life I think I moved to London at 18 I've now been here longer than I was up north so I've been here for 24 years and that whole time period of adulthood has been supported and uplifted and you know really like taken through that period thanks to my chosen family and also running my own companies and working for myself that has also played into my you know i'm so aware and grateful of the fact that one of the biggest privileges you have when you run your own business is choosing who you get to spend your day with you know five days a week yeah and so i started my first company with my best friend and now i run my ceramics company with my husband and so i thrive in that way of building something with people that I love is so much a part of my working life.

33:06Henry Holland:So who else is in your chosen family? Oh, so many. So, I mean, my oldest, you know, I have so many friends from up north. We have a really close-knit group of friends who now all live down here. So people are often like, but you still sound quite northern. It's because I spend my time with northerners. I might live here, but I spend my time with just northerners. uh so like you know my my uh my best friends neil and jess and monkey like we're all we're from we you know we we grew up together in the north and now we just sort of migrated together that's really nice isn't it yeah so that that whole mid-noughties period oh yeah yeah there was a lot like you were a lot of parties weren't you so so many people refer to me being at a lot of parties and you're right I was in my mid-20s I was living in Camden and I started to get invited to every party going pretty much so who isn't going to go to those parties but I think my my slight frustration with it is I'm often asked I remember going for some funding once from uh like applying to a fund to you know and I presented my business plan and it was you know completely proficient and you know I taught my way through the balance sheet and the P &L and my five-year projections this is what I'm going to do with your funding and this is how I'm going to spend it and this is why and one of the older ladies on the panel was like well how are you going to do all this because we all know you don't stay in every night and I sort of lost it a little bit because that was that's a real frustration for me and I was like well actually I get paid to go out most nights of the week and then when I get paid I then go to the factory in the morning and release the goods that I haven't been able to pay for or I go to the supplies and buy buttons like I was DJing and it was a way of me generating funds to keep my business going quite often and I'm 22 so what you know at the same time but um but yes it was a really exciting time where we were part of a real sort of cultural movement um and that and also that from a from a business perspective the clothes I was making was very much built around that frenetic energy of like that scene and that you know that nightlife scene and you know I was making clothes for people to wear to all of these parties and so it really played into my career to be seen as that party guy and it worked and it allowed me to build a real community and a real kind of personality and a real sort of essence around the brand that I was building and I think one of the reasons that I struggled further down the line with maintaining the brand to the same level was because I was tired I was like I was in my mid to late 30s and you know I no longer wanted to go out five nights a week and yet the brand that I'd created was had its had its roots so deeply embedded in that scene and I was creating these sort of clothes for pop stars and you know to wear to parties and you know nightclubs and that was kind of the the the vibe of the brand that we created and when you create a really strong essence of a brand it can you know it's its strength as long as it still authentically connects to you as the figurehead and when it wasn't doing that anymore I struggled and that's why when I did start a ceramics company when I was 38 it was the perfect alignment to who I was at 38 staying in it's staying in and looking at the mantelpiece right looking at nice vases and turning on a nice lamp yeah but like I you know when I was when I started house of Holland I was 22 and all I wanted to do was go out every night of the week and so it was the perfect reflection of who I was and that's why it was an authentic brand that was built off this real sense of authenticity I just made slogan t-shirts because all I wanted to wear to the club nights that I was going to were slogan t-shirts and you know in these acid bright colors and then when I got to 38 all I wanted to do was you know make pottery and listen to a podcast and that's what I built a business on so I have to be kind of doing something that is really authentically connected to who I am in that moment it makes a lot of sense and so to I think to a lot of people you're like from fashion to ceramics it's quite a jump but to me it feels very normal Can I just pick up on something you said?

37:38Henry Holland:Did you get paid then to go to a lot of these parties? Is that how it works? And they want you there with your buddies for a photo. And who's paying for that? The brand that's holding the event. Yeah. It's so interesting. I'm being really cagey. Yeah. Yeah, it's an entire industry. Paid to parties, an entire industry. Paris Hilton claims she started it. She's probably right. But if you're a PR company hosting an event and you want to get that event publicized in certain media, then you, you know, it becomes a... But back then, to be honest, more often than not, I went because it was free bar. And, you know, I was 24.

38:22Henry Holland:Well, also, if you can all be wearing your slogan T-shirts, then happy days. Exactly, right? And when you're in your mid-20s, you've got the energy and the appetite to do it. And, you know, you don't want to miss out. There's a real sense of fear of missing out. And you want to be a part of those cultural moments. And we were having the time of our lives. I think when House of Holland finished, I was really reflective. and I looked back over the period and I didn't have a single regret of how anything happened. And I was just so overwhelmed with gratitude that I got to do what I did for nearly 15 years and I had the time of my life.

39:06It was literally, you know, I couldn't imagine anything more suited to what I dreamt of doing and being in my 20s.

39:17Henry Holland:so given that what what was it like when it went into administration it was 2020 wasn't it 2020 it was just as we went it was literally as we went into the pandemic yeah how did it feel it was heartbreaking yeah it was heartbreaking it was devastating and as and but i think it was probably the year running up to that for me because you're having to keep a brave face on knowing the challenges behind the scenes, but knowing that every single month you're awake for like weeks and then worrying about the salaries because you've got 20 people in the room whose rent you're responsible for. And as I said, you know, I've always seen my teams at work as a chosen family as well as, you know, not at work.

40:05And I really felt the pressure and the weight of the struggles that we were going through and you sort of feel it in isolation because you can't really share it with the team it's not appropriate to let them know how on the edge things are and at the same time you're trying to do every single thing that you can to maintain and protect everything and it it's the year before you know the minute you make the decision is when all of that pressure lifts off your shoulders my shoulders physically and figuratively were like up by my ears for a good two years and the minute I made that decision that it was the right thing to do to to put into administration and it was sold on um a lot of that pressure lifted because you know I I wasn't holding that all of that tension in myself anymore and then very quickly I moved into the that place of gratitude of just like so grateful that I was able to do what I did for so long I'm just really proud and excited to look back at all the things that I did achieve but it was I think it was the year prior to the actual decision that was

41:22Henry Holland:the really hard heartbreaking time and then where did the pivot into homewares come from pretty quick yeah uh so i think it was about two or three months and maybe a couple of months off obviously we were all in lockdown i really quickly realized that i needed a creative output so not necessarily a creative outlet but an output like i just love making things and i love the process of having an idea developing a product creating that and that then becoming a physical thing and I just I really quickly realized you know initially I was like I'll just consult for other people and I'll tell them how to spend their money and I won't have the pressure of having to find the money to make the ideas a reality and very quickly I realized that whilst that was you know less pressured it wasn't really kind of fulfilling my sort of thirst and need to create things and so um I started having some ceramics lessons sort of evening classes and I had I think three or four and then the lockdowns got more and more intense and it was you know we were able to stretch it a little bit more because it was an educational activity and so we were able to kind of bend it a little bit and then lockdowns just got worse and worse and then it was no longer possible to kind of go and have these classes anymore so I just ordered a lot of clay to the kitchen and that Christmas when we were not even allowed to see family that first one I was just in the kitchen making tableware and my husband was like will you shut up I'm trying to watch a film um and I ordered all these clays to the house and like you know I was just making it in the kitchen table like literally physically at the kitchen table and then sort of at moments when we were allowed to going to use the kilns at the place where I'd had these classes.

43:23And that's when it kind of started, really. And then my teacher who taught me ceramics, she moved back to Istanbul because travel was getting kind of cut off and she was worried she was not going to be able to get back to her family. And so she moved back to Istanbul and I was like, who's taking your studio? And she was like, no one. I was like, I'll have it. so then I really quickly had my own studio uh and then it really it kind of it grew really quickly um so it was a shared studio of five people uh and one of those people still works with me today so I basically I got my first order from liberties when it was just me on my own making these pots and uh they ordered 500 pieces 600 pieces um and my husband was like well you can't do that and I was like of course I can I was like I'll figure it out I'll make it happen and so I went into the shared studio the next day and just looked around the room was like anyone want a job and a couple of them did and helped me and now one of them still works with me today so I sort of really commandeered that shared studio space for a few months I was quite cheeky I was like do you need that shelf do you need that shelf and then quickly got my own studio and

44:34Henry Holland:and kind of it built from there well you're sitting next to one of your lamps and there's quite a lot of your pieces in here so let's talk about this house then yeah it's very much a house of two halves isn't it so explain that it is it's a house of two halves and i don't know if you noticed but the garden as you enter the house is also one of two halves so we've done so the house is double fronted on one side of the house the garden's been landscaped and done on the other side it hasn't so it's giving people an idea of what they're about to enter right so one side of the garden we've kept because we know we have still loads to rip out and it's going to just have to sit and ruin any garden that gets done in the first so we're holding that space um yeah so we we started the renovation of the house um last year and we did the renovation from the top down so any mess just sort of comes out through the house rather than kind of doing the ground floor and then doing the attic and just taking all that dust and mess up back through all those nicely done rooms why didn't why didn't you do it all at once we didn't do all at once because couldn't afford would it?

45:36Quite simply, yeah. We, you know, this house is a much, it's a bigger house than our last house. Like we really stretched ourselves to buy a bigger home. And so, you know, we didn't have the money left over to do all the renovation all at once. And then shortly after buying it, my, you know, career changed dramatically. And I was building a business and, you know, I'm sure you know, building a business and, you know, trying to build a home at the same time is really challenging you've kind of got one pot of money and it's like do I build and grow the business the way that I want to or do I kind of you know focus on the house so it's just a juggling act and we're we're doing it slowly also we wanted to live in this in our previous house we bought the house and also you know did that classic of like made sure there was enough money left over on the mortgage to do all the renovations all at once so we lived in it for literally a matter of weeks and then tore the whole thing down and redid it in one go and I think so many things then once we lived in it in hindsight we would have done differently because of the way we lived within the space and understanding you know the light in different rooms and understanding the way that you kind of the flow of the space and you know how you want to use certain rooms so we wanted to live in it for a little bit anyway to understand it properly and make sure we didn't make any rush decisions but also the realities of renovating a house all at once we just didn't have the money

47:04Henry Holland:so this this is currently the the kind of we're currently in the unrenovated bit unrenovated sitting room yeah with a bay victorian bay window yeah and then you're gonna this is now this is gonna become the kitchen and where i'm sat the wall behind me is gonna be knocked out for um an entrance down into um a dining room and then the current kitchen which is a very small is going to move into here. Yeah. Excuse the brief interruption. If you're interested in taking a look around Henry's house, the video tour is available to insiders on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash homing with Matt. Back to the podcast.

47:47So you share it with your husband, David. I do. And your dog. And my dog, Larry. Larry the pug. Larry the pug, who's a new addition. Yeah. So, yeah, we've been here for about four years nearly now. But we've been in this area. So we're in Victoria Park in East London, and we've been in this area now for like just over 10 years. So we love the area and love being close to the park.