The Vogue team has been enamored with Sadie Perry’s taste since she first launched Mantel in 2021 with a collection of modernist objets truffled out during pre-dawn trips to antiques fairs across Europe. Having trained as a silversmith in Mexico and worked as a jewelry designer for years beforehand, she’s as thrilled by discovering distinctive pieces by someone technically accomplished yet “completely unknown” as a rare Edgar Brandt lamp or Catherine Noll jewelry.
Her curated “chrome, wood and glass” finds, European shopping director Naomi Smart enthuses, “often have an Art Deco feel to them”—and “come to life” in her newly opened studio on Wilton Way in Hackney, East London, which Perry decorated herself, giving the walls a lick of Farrow & Ball’s New White and making her own tasseled shades for the pendant lights.
Dealing with people exclusively from “behind a screen”, she says, “can feel a bit soulless” after a while, with the long-awaited space enabling her to take customers through her Secessionist trinket boxes and Monique Vedie clip-ons in person. “Some of my favorite interactions, though, have been with the local elderly people who pass the shop on their daily walks and come in to tell me about their own collections,” she jokes.
Here, she answers Vogue’s questions about her life, style, and the points where the two intersect.
Vogue: What’s on your bedside table right now?
Sadie Perry: It’s a high-low mix; my mouthguard sits next to a trinket dish that I put my jewelry in before going to sleep, a pot of melatonin, a tiny René Delavan lamp, and a tub of Sudocrem.
And in your bathroom cabinet?
Evolve Beauty’s Gentle Cleansing Melt, mainly because it smells like Turkish delight; Dylure for dyeing my eyebrows at home fortnightly; and Sans[Ceuticals] Shampoo and Conditioner, plus Oway H Melt Mask in Divine Gold for keeping my color warm.