Rachel Castle

Inspired by her colourful and creative bed linen, Karen McCartney talks to Rachel Castle about her passion for colour and her art, and discovers a surprising secret love...

Your world is a pretty cheery one. What do you do to keep the energy levels up?
For starters going to work means not cleaning/clearing/washing/drying/sorting/putting away a single thing at home, so I'm pretty damn keen to get there, and I do so as early as my parenting duties allow me! My studio is the place where everything is 'out'; its my complete work in progress mess and I TOTALLY love being here. This really helps to get me to work early and motivated and ready to rock'n'roll. As a mother of two teenagers I have a window of opportunity that can't be missed. I can't be at the studio late or on weekends so my time at work needs to be very productive. This definitely keeps the pace going.   I also get great energy from the people I work with. Leni my production manager is one of the greatest human beings on the planet, no jokes, so being with her five days a week is a treat that I never take for granted.



Colour & whimsy are central to your brand. Has it always been the case with you and interior design?
I've watched my 15 year old daughter in the last year really develop an interior aesthetic very uniquely her own. It started when she was 14 and although she has ZERO interest in my business (OMG so borrrring mum) she loves all the pop culture that teenagers love these days, all intermingled together, fashion and graphic design and interiors and photography, all in one.

I definitely think being a teenager in the 80's – remember Boy George ribbons and Stuart Membery Lake Tahoe windcheaters and yellow high top Connies and pink gingham bikinis and Dolly magazine – has defined my style. I don't think I ever moved on from this basic aesthetic. This was the time that a framework for what I liked developed and it has never waned. It was about tons of colour and spots and cuteness, it was young and very fresh, and it has very much stuck with me ever since.  Maybe it was because I wasn't 'creative' at this age that it sat dormant waiting to be accessed for over 30 years.



Tell us something of your creative background?
I studied PR at RMIT after leaving school, and landed a part-time job in the marketing department at Country Road which I loved. I then moved to the UK and worked at The Conran Shop, still in marketing, and then Alex Willcock, Russell Pinch and myself set up a branding agency called The Nest in London in the nineties, where we worked on clients including Michelin, British Airways, WHSmith and Lancome. For the first 15 years of my career I was always responsible for branding and marketing and project directing the creative vision set by others. I learnt how to 'run' a business, how to market and brand it, how to speak its visual language. Consistently throughout this time I would knit and sew in my home time, just little presents for friends and family. Then the babies came along and I stopped working and started, TOTALLY by accident, sewing little artworks as a means of doing something other than wiping the benches and putting the groceries away while the babies slept. I had no idea that a couple of little embroideries could turn into my third child, my business baby, but they have, and I am so UNBELIEVABLY grateful for it.



You balance product development and design with your own artworks. Does each discipline help the other creatively?
Absolutely.  Each is crucial to the total brand story but it's also important that someone who buys a painting doesn't see that same design rolled out for bed linen. The artwork and the bed linen are two different things that just happen to work well together. We try to keep the bed linen very ordered; there's a lot of colour and spots but the patterns are very mathematical even in their randomness. The artwork on the other hand is always organically shaped and very free from order which I think is why the two work so well together.



You favour certain fabrics – cotton, velvet, a gold shimmer pillowcase. What attracts you to certain colours and materials?
The fabrics we choose must have a simplicity to them because the colours we use are so vibrant. The fabrics are like a white wall - simple and good and true, and the twist comes from the colour and pattern that we apply.  It's really hard to design simple things, to keep bed linen 'quiet' enough to sleep with, yet just with a little twist of something whimsical. Thank God someone invented the spot all those years ago.  Whoever did, thank you, you win my Nobel prize of thanks to mankind.



The sense of the hand-made and the connection to you as the maker is very important in your work. Do you think that connection is something your customer is looking for? 
Absolutely. I respond to every customer email I receive the same day it comes in, its very important to me that customers are aware that it is Leni and myself here at the office, completely accessible and very much available to anyone who needs us. I look at every single order myself to make sure I know who is purchasing what and what each client requires. An extension of this is very much the handmade nature of the works we provide. Every artwork, from a major painting, to a printed teatowel has a handmark that I have personally made on the work. Its time consuming but to my brand, absolutely everything that it stands for. All the embroideries I hand cut and sew myself; they've often spent time everywhere from on the sofa with the kids, to the bed on a Sunday morning, to sometimes even in the car on a rainy day waiting for my husband. There is nowhere these little artworks haven't been sewn, and I think this makes them really special.



What do you hope your customers feel when they receive a package from Castle & Things?
Firstly I want them to get a big whacking smack of colour. Selling everything online means that the digital colour we get in the photos NEVER truly tells the intense colour story that you get from paint or ink or the beautiful felts we use. I get so many emails telling me that the colour is just so much better in the flesh when an artwork arrives and so this colour story for the client is really important to me. I also want a customer to feel that we have given them time and energy, and as a complete and boring perfectionist, every stitch, every colour, every curved letter is EXACTLY the way I want it to be. There is no corner cutting, no 'that'll do because we're busy'. At every stitch I am thinking of the client at the other end undoing the package. And so I hope that a package from us sings with a lot of love and a LOT of care.



Do you think in a creative business it helps to be a little BA BA BONKERS?
Always. Sometimes I get paralysed creatively by what I think the customer will want. Is it too colourful? Is it too the same? Is it too naughty? Is it just a bit dumb? Seven years down the track I've learnt that our customers want us to be a bit loose; the more bonkers the better.

QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS

If I were an animal I would be a flamingo. Well I wouldn't be one but I would LOVE to be, they are so pretty and pink with a touch of blush and a little fluoro around the temple. They are my lifetime best ever, first thing I ever visit at the zoo, favourite animal.

My favourite forbidden food is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.  That is so so so beyond bad, but the truth.

My idea of a fun night out is drinks with Leni and Fran at Freda's in Chippendale.

My friends tell me my strongest personality trait is my loyalty.

My creative hero is Tracey Emin. Full stop by far the bravest and best, great boobs too. x

Images courtesy of Castle and Things. Follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelcastleandthings