Meet the CEO Adding Fashion Flair to Heritage Home Interiors Group, Sanderson

LONDON — Lisa Montague has spent most of her career managing luxury fashion brands, so when she moved sideways into the world of high-end home interiors, it was only natural she’d take the designers on the journey too.

Having headed businesses including Loewe and Aspinal of London, where she served as chief executive officer, and Mulberry, where she was chief operating officer, Montague knew how to manage high-end brands with history. But her job as CEO of Sanderson Design Group meant working on a whole different level.

The group’s flagship brand, Sanderson, has had a royal warrant since 1923, supplying its rich botanical fabrics, paint and wall coverings to royal residences, and to the late Queen Elizabeth II in particular. Founded in 1860, it’s the oldest existing English brand in the home furnishings industry.

The group, formerly known as Walker Greenbank, is quoted on the AIM listing of the London Stock Exchange with annual revenue of around 110 million pounds.

It owns the Morris & Co. archive and undertakes preservation work on designs created by the iconic William Morris and his artistic Victorian cohort. Other brands in the portfolio include Zoffany, known for its silks damask and velvet fabrics which are made in the mills of Suffolk, England, and Harlequin, famous for its vibrant colors and patterns.

The group also owns the England-based Anstey wallpaper factory in Loughborough, and Standfast & Barracks, a fabric printing factory, in Lancaster, which offers a full range of techniques from handblock to digital, which is unique in the U.K.

The group archive houses tens of thousands of historic documents, designs and color recipes, which have recently been digitized and moved — along with the rest of the group — to Voysey House in Chiswick, London.

The Arts and Crafts building designed by the architect CFA Voysey was Sanderson’s home from 1902 to 1928, and underwent extensive restoration before the team moved back in earlier this month.

While Voysey House was undergoing its transformation, Montague decided to do some updating of her own, exploring how to add a 21st-century dimension to Sanderson’s designs, and marry home interior design with the business she knew best, fashion.

It wasn’t a difficult match. Management-wise, she said “there are far more similarities than differences — it’s all a creative business that involves interaction with designers and the joy of building a future legacy for heritage brands.”

“The pace is a little different, and the good side is that we can take the time needed to finesse a design and product to be the best version of itself — without the pressure of missing a season,” she said in an interview.

Montague added that consumers — and designers — are influenced by the same cultural references, noting that period dramas such as “The Queen’s Gambit” and “Bridgerton” are influencing interior design as well as clothing and accessories.

The customers overlap, too. Montague believes the passage from “wardrobe to walls” is an easy one for any luxury customer who places a high value on materials, craft and design talent.

That’s one reason why she tapped the London designer Giles Deacon to cast a fresh eye over some of the Sanderson archive pieces. Once a regular at London Fashion Week, Deacon now makes ready-to-wear and couture pieces for private clients around the world.

Deacon worked closely with Sanderson’s in-house design team, blending the house’s designs with his own illustrations and signature motifs for a collection that comprises around 37 fabrics and 34 wallpapers.

The collection, Sanderson x Giles Deacon, took two years to complete and saw Deacon and the Sanderson team create patterns including Mydsommer Pickings, which is based on Deacon’s ink drawings of poppy heads, and Oology Portal, which features eggs of different shapes and colors.

The egg pattern was drawn from one of Deacon’s archive dress designs.

The designer also worked his signature sawtooth stripe into fabrics and created a wallpaper mural called Pygmalion, a grand, theatrical design with curtains, a classical temple, giant artichokes, Rococo dolphins, fennel, garlic bulbs and mollusk shells, strings of pearls and feathers.

Deacon’s drawings, said Montague, have “added a layer of interest that has enriched the original designs. He also refers to [the updated patterns] as suitable for an ‘unstately,’ home, meaning they’re not only for grand houses.”

The designer said his aim was to immerse the viewer in a world of “magical storytelling.” Colors range from rich, deep jewel tones to softer organic shades, such as indigo, olive and berry, which look as if they’ve been bleached by the sun.

Deacon said while the designs and inspirations came from the Sanderson archive, “everything was completely redrawn for the collection. I wanted everything to look like it came from one hand, and belonged to one world. Very little was done on the computer, which gave everything an extra level of authenticity.”

The work was similar to fashion in many ways, Deacon said. “We used the same makers and weavers in Suffolk as we do for the clothing collections, and the process of design is the same,” Deacon said.

Unlike with fashion, these designs are meant to endure for decades. “I designed this to be timeless — and to be around forever,” he said.

The response to the Sanderson x Giles Deacon collection has been “very strong,” particularly in the U.S., where Deacon and the Sanderson team toured cities including Los Angeles, Houston and New York, Montague said.

The U.S. generates around one-third of the group’s sales, and Montague said she’s keen for that number to grow. The company has offices in New Jersey and showrooms in New York and Chicago, and Montague said the group can deck out a supersized Texas mansion as easily as it can a cottage in the Cotswolds.

Montague had fashion on her mind even before the Giles Deacon reveal. Last year she tapped the photographer and stylist Damian Foxe, editor in chief of Man About Town and formerly fashion director of The Financial Times’ lifestyle magazine How to Spend It, for a Sanderson campaign.

The campaign was meant to “redefine Sanderson for a new era,” and shows the models becoming one with their interiors, wearing wallpaper gowns, hats and accessories made using the brand’s heritage prints.

“There is beauty in pattern,” Foxe said. “Our muse has become so lost in the joyous process of decorating that she has forgotten to stop until she has become completely enveloped in the space around her.”

Montague has another fashion-adjacent collaboration in the pipeline. For fall 2024 she asked Henry Holland, the fashion designer-turned-ceramicist, to collaborate with Harlequin, with the collection is set for release on Aug. 4.

Montague’s past work with heritage brands — Loewe is even older than Sanderson — has informed her approach to Morris & Co. in particular.

The group worked with François-Joseph Graf on the Arts & Crafts-inspired interiors of At Sloane, the new hotel on the edges of Sloane Square, and is currently collaborating with The Huntington library, art museum and botanical gardens in San Marino, Calif., which house a number of unfinished designs by William Morris.

The Huntington approached Morris & Co. to complete more than 35 designs. Montague said those designs will inspire a new set of fabrics and wallpapers, which are set to launch in September 2025.

Morris, the 19th-century textile designer, author, poet and social activist, is inspiring Montague in myriad ways — particularly on the sustainability front.

Sanderson’s “history of botanical prints, and love of gardens” will guide the company into its next phase of design, said Montague, adding that she often finds herself thinking, “What would William Morris do if he were alive today?”

She uses that question to navigate the company’s efforts to reduce waste and emissions; explore the use of natural dyes and fibers, and focus on traditional craft skills. It was Morris and his colleagues who admired the natural world and prized tradition, craft and handmade objects.

“We need to be bold and intrepid — challenging the status quo of our industry and doing things efficiently, responsibly and with little waste. These designs last for generations when we get them right,” she said.

Montague is even thinking of returning to the idea of using fabric wall hangings for insulation, something that medieval and Renaissance royals liked to do in their drafty castles. The proposition will no doubt whet the appetite of the designers, illustrators and creators in Montague’s orbit.