Inside Soane’s Most Ambitious Collection Yet, Created in Collaboration with Billy Cotton

A beautifully and carefully layered interior is the crucial foundation of great interior design. It is the skillful mixing of different textures, finishes, materials, and time periods that creates a feeling that the space has gently evolved.

Knowing how to mix traditional and modern design often requires an expert eye, and there may be no two forces as qualified to dictate the narrative on this as these two. The American designer Billy Cotton plays on the ‘tension between old and new, patina and polish, past and future.’ The esteemed British interiors brand, Soane Britain, is renowned for its artful mixing of the classic and the contemporary. Together, they have created a superbly crafted collection that has got our pulse racing.

There has always been ‘a little moment’ of Soane Britain in American designer Billy Cotton’s interior schemes. ‘This is the magical part of my dual life as an industrial designer and decorator,’ says Billy. ‘Part of why I love being a decorator is that I love to shop. I found Soane because I was shopping for lights and I fell for its brass and rattan double rise-and-fall pendant, so I started ordering it – drawn not only to the craftsmanship but to the use of natural materials, which lend a humanity and tactility – and I haven’t stopped.’ Now, Billy has his own collection, designed in collaboration with Soane Britain’s founder, Lulu Lytle.

Initially trained at the prestigious Pratt Institute art school, Billy founded his interior design practice in 2011. His style plays on the ‘tension between old and new, patina and polish, past and future’, often pitched against pure white walls and ceilings to allow eclectic pieces to take centre stage. These pieces include a vintage curved Milo Baughman sofa upholstered in an archival Brunschwig & Fils floral (‘the crescendo of what I love’), adding colour to a stripped-back art-deco ocean-front home; or richly hued, shaggy vintage Moroccan rugs, painted antique cabinets and neoclassical lamps jostling alongside a mid-century Jean Prouvé table, 1950s Italian floor lamps or a 1930s Heal’s dining chair. His passion for crafting rooms that ‘both fulfil and ignite curiosities, moulded from light and shadow, pattern and colour’ shines through every scheme.

Before Billy studied industrial design, he studied history: ‘So my interest started with people and stories, which then evolved into objects, which became my operating tools for decorating,’ he says.

In his style, there are distinct hints of his New England upbringing – ‘where there is a deep aesthetic restraint’ – as well as his Irish mother’s love for 1970s contemporary furniture, colonial-era antiques, and French textiles, which he explains in his book, Billy Cotton: Interior & Design Work, published by Rizzoli in 2022. But while he has no problem embracing centuries-old design, he doesn’t want to live in an old-fashioned world. ‘I am always trying to move things forward. I want to always be thinking about modernity,’ he says.

This is what drew Lulu Lytle to collaborating, enamoured by the way Billy’s use of Soane’s pieces in his projects makes even the more traditional designs feel really current.

The collection, which encompasses fabrics, wallpapers, furniture, and lighting, allowed Billy ‘to quietly dream’ while simultaneously setting Soane’s skilled artisans ‘new challenges in terms of technique and use of materials,’ Lulu says.

In the mix is one of Billy’s previous designs, a Regency five-arm chandelier, ‘perfected with Soane’ by seamlessly wrapping the metal arms in leather or rattan. It is contrasted alongside sleek tubular wall, table, floor, and ceiling task lights in brass or nickel; named Palomar, after the observatory in San Diego, the designs masterfully imitate the look and feel of optical instruments and telescopes.

A contemporary, hand screen-printed Quadrille linen – inspired by 18th-century appliqué flowers in Soane’s textile archive and Billy’s idea of ‘a woman carrying a posy at her wedding in spring’ – has an undulating ribbon-like effect; while a handsome, simple stripe acts like ‘a neutral because I can set anything against it,’ the designer says.

For the sculptural Aquinnah arm and dining chairs, rattan seating is combined with a ‘scaffolding’ of leather-wrapped metal. ‘I love being able to see beautifully expressed engineering,’ says Billy. His solid timber pedestal-base dining table with leather and brass banding and decorative stud detailing, made by craftspeople in Suffolk and Essex, plays on ‘the conviviality of coming together’ that happens around a round rather than a rectangular table.

Today, Billy has taken the design process a step further by also becoming a partner in the architectural firm CTK. ‘Part of that is because I felt like humans weren’t being taken into account in the design, that it was so much about aesthetics and not about people and how they live,’ he says. To this end, Billy’s work forges a visceral connection between interior spaces, the objects in them, and the people living there, whether it is a relaxed beach house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a chic Manhattan apartment, a quirky farmhouse or a grand mansion.

This is what has drawn him particularly to Lulu and Soane, ‘where there is community, materiality and end-user longevity – all the things that are increasingly important to confront the technological world we’re living in,’ he says. ‘I find that if you make something real, it will be good. But things don’t have to be so serious all the time. Aren’t we here to have a little bit of fun too?