It has been 60 years since Terence Conran’s Habitat swept through suburban Britain, unloading French cookware, bentwood rocking chairs and duvets (then known as continental quilts) on an unsuspecting populace still clutching their eiderdowns.
The brand’s 1964 launch was a seismic event in the logbook of domestic life.
Here, in 6,000 square feet of homeware heaven on Fulham Road, you could service a more continental kind of residence with everything from Scandinavian furniture to the famous Chicken Brick.
Today eBay facilitates a thriving trade in Habitat catalogues, first launched in 1966, though a title from the Sixties or Seventies might cost more than anything you can find in store.
“Back in the day, there was nowhere that showed all these products together to illustrate what it would look like in your home and the idea that something like the Habitat catalogue could be like a lifestyle magazine was exciting,” says product designer Sebastian Conran, Terence’s eldest son.
“I was eight when Habitat opened. It’s been a very important part of my formative years.”
Sebastian may have cut his teeth stacking shelves as a teenager, but fast-forward a few decades and he’s taken on a role as designer in residence – in part to oversee the brand’s 60th anniversary collection, which launches today.
Three generations of Conrans have made their mark on Habitat’s 60 Years of Design offering. There’s Sebastian, of course, who is behind a sculptural seven-strong lighting capsule (“functional innovation is my thing and I like things that have to work”).
His nephew Felix Conran, the son of Sophie, has designed two pebble-like mirrors, a modish curved shelf and a pair of clever connecting tables.
Then there is the hand and eye of Terence, who died in 2020, in the shape of a slew of archival releases tweaked for today’s market — including a reissue of 2004’s Ribbon lamp sure to put a dent in soaring prices of vintage editions.
“When Habitat first opened, it was unique and leading – high-end design existed but at a price. Habitat did not invent design, but what it did was make aspirational design accessible and affordable to all and captured the imagination,” says Sebastian.
“It was always full of stuff that made my wallet itch and gave the sort of feeling that one didn’t usually get on the high street.”
Hoping to give today’s customers the itch factor are a clutch of guest designers including “old friends” Margo Selby and Tord Boontje, who both designed for Habitat in the Noughties, as well as Simone Brewster, Guy Selwood-Miller, Silvia Kamodyová, Planq and up-and-comer Callum Hall.
The brand’s design team, led by head of design Andrew Tanner, supplements the visitors with pieces designed in house, from Jenga-like stacked salt and pepper shakers to a ‘Portobello’ mushroom lamp that riffs on a 1979 design.
The business publicly stumbled in the 2010s, went into administration in 2011 and was bought out by Sainsbury’s amid retail shuffles six years later. The new collection suggests fresh design ambition for a brand that some worried would fade under that stewardship.
“I’m so moved by what has been created for the 60th anniversary and I really feel that this is a renaissance of Habitat as it was originally intended. My dad was in his early 30s when he opened Habitat and he was aiming it at people of his own age and probably even younger,” says Sebastian.
So what would Conran senior have made of it all?
“I think he would have been delighted if he could see the collection. He always had an opinion, of course, but I think he would have been very pleased indeed.”
Habitat’s 60 Years of Design collection is online now and in selected Sainsbury’s stores from May 5. habitat.co.uk
