All Net Curtains, No Knickers, and Low-Rise Jeans
Biophilic Ceramics & 90s Landfill Culture
How 90s Cool Britannia brainwashed a generation into loving landfills—and how I finally broke the spell.
I grew up on a smallholding next to a large dairy farm—think The Good Life. This raw, zero-waste upbringing ultimately laid the foundation for my work today in biophilic ceramics. Both of my parents were the first in their families to escape the coal pits or the role of a housewife. Our life was deeply frugal; sustainability wasn’t a topic we discussed around the dinner table, it was just lived out through our daily actions. We wore hand-me-down clothes, shared baths, and learned the art of making do.
We also learned to grow our own vegetables and kill our own food. It was raw, practical, and exciting. Ultimately, waste not, want not was our absolute family motto.
My dad was the managing director of an engineering firm, and my mum the first female accountant for an international brewery. They were the literal definition of corporate Boomers.
However, on the flip side of that corporate ambition, they mostly rejected the typical blueprint of keeping up with the Joneses—obviously, they kept appearances up a little bit, but their hearts weren’t in it. Their daily actions were all about mitigating the excess there lives demanded by trying to live a life behind closed doors that was deeply kind to the environment instead. They lived this way with a quiet awareness that few of their peers shared their outlook.
Weaponised Retail and the 90s Illusion
By the 90s, the UK was fully enveloped in Cool Britannia. During this era, my young life sat in a strange, chalk-and-cheese dynamic. We were fundamentally a working-class family at heart. But because my parents worked grueling hours, I went to a private school and had nannies who looked after me.
I spent my free time making mud pies and exploring the countryside. Ironically, I was entirely oblivious to it. I distinctly remember begging my mum to let us go to the countryside. She just looked at me and said, “You live on a farm six miles from a town. We are in the countryside.”
Looking back, I didn’t recognise the nature around me because the British “countryside” is largely an engineered construct. We tamed the wild by hacking away the true wilderness. Instead, we created a pristine, dystopian Capability Brown ideal. This was a curated illusion of nature built by aristocrats. It certainly wasn’t the wild, David Attenborough version of nature I watched in awe on the TV.
During that era, the nation was pivoting hard into an era of aggressive conspicuous consumption. The culture became all net curtains and no knickers. Everyone was obsessed with looking wealthy on the outside while remaining entirely hollow within.
The New Labour, Britpop style was king. People actually believed that being wasteful made you look sophisticated. We sprayed chemicals on every surface, destroying all the natural plants in our gardens. Then, we replaced them with high-maintenance, resource-guzzling lawns and invasive flowering plants. We proudly wore cheap polyester, ate margarine, and drank E-number-laden alcopops while literally trying to starve ourselves to death to look “skinny.”
Trapped in the Cycle of Mindless Waste
I remember a kid’s party at Maccies where my dad absolutely refused to let me have the Happy Meal box or the branded wrapping. He knew it was just going straight in the bin. I was profoundly embarrassed at the time.
Today, I tell that story with immense pride. He didn’t know exactly how bad things would get. Yet, he saw that disposable cardboard as the beginning of the end. As a result, he was determined not to get swept up in that mindless waste.
In those days, choosing a natural lifestyle made you look like a stoned hippy. You were seen as an uneducated woolly who wore socks with sandals and read by candlelight. Mainstream society associated that lifestyle with Greenpeace. Back then, that affiliation could easily blacklist you from a civil service interview. We, en masse, truly had no connection to the planet we lived on.
Like so many people, I used art to figure out my place in the world. Creativity became my anchor. It was the only way I could truly be myself while surfing between these two wildly different worlds. I was balancing corporate privilege against the grit of a mining heritage. By making things, I found my footing. I translated the economic tension of my childhood into a language that finally made sense.
My journey to creating Make Love Not Landfill started in my wardrobe. Built-in, of course, it covered the entirety of one wall in my bedroom. As 90s teenagers, we were the ultimate guinea pigs for this weaponised retail. We flocked into Tammy Girl for neon crop tops and strutted arms linked into Topshop for Moto jeans that proudly showed our arsecracks, seduced by a Spice Girls brand of high-octane “Girl Power.”
Then came Sex and the City, fueling an early-2000s, “have-it-all boss bitch attitude” that corporate marketers weaponised completely. Our independence, our feminism, and our entire identity became inextricably linked to buying more stuff. A toxic new rule emerged: you could not be seen in the same outfit twice.
Marketers targeted our teenage insecurities with clinical precision, playing a flawless long game. Their conditioning worked so perfectly that we successfully morphed into the over-consuming 40- and 50-year-olds driving the modern online high street. Today, the endless chase for a quick fashion fix is paired with a desperate attempt to keep that inner teenager alive via Botox and Ozempic. It is an exhausting cycle that leaves an entire generation sick, tired, and always begging for the next cosmetic or retail hit.
The Birth of Biophilic Ceramics
By my late teens, the thrill of fast fashion completely wore off. The waste not, want not growl of my childhood grew too loud to ignore. We didn’t just need to change our clothes; we needed to break the spell entirely. So, in 2009, I started Make Love Not Landfill. I wanted to reject the landfill culture we were trained to love. My goal was to make sustainability feel less like a lecture and more like a revolution.
Initially, the business model focused on upcycling reclaimed materials and sourcing exceptional vintage. I spent years selling curations of vintage fashion, handmade art, and clothing. We even brought curated experiences to major festivals like Glastonbury.
But over the years, the landscape shifted dramatically. True vintage is finite. Decades of hyper-disposable culture have depleted the supply. Frankly, there just isn’t enough good stuff left.
That exhaustion of resources forced me back into the dirt. Today, I act as a studio “Womble.” I forage for historical wood, vintage jewellery, and discarded hardware to save them from a landfill legacy. Then, I use them to ground something entirely new.
I hand-sculpt luxury, biophilic ceramics layered with loud textures and vibrant glazes. It is soul-infused, eccentric art. I designed it as the ultimate antidote to mass-produced, toxic beige decor.
Coming Full Circle in the Mountains
This evolution eventually brought me full circle. I reconnected with nature in my spiritual home among the high mountains of Europe through the launch of our Alpine Field Journeys. Ironically, that childhood duality became my greatest asset. The intense frugality behind closed doors paired perfectly with an elite private school veneer.
It gave me the keys to step into worlds of opulence. I learned to extract the absolute best of what money can bring while filtering out the mindless waste entirely.
Today, I put that wanderlust I felt as a child into our holidays. That joyful, lifesaving creativity drives everything we do. Alongside incredible guest artists, we invite you to completely disconnect from the daily grind. We guide you to reconnect with your true self through pure, creative play. It is an invitation to create entirely without boundaries, judgment, or rules—exactly like a child would.
Relax at your fully catered creative holiday in the stunning French Alps. It is eco-led luxury at its finest. We feature sustainable, no-fly rail travel options and decadent local food and wine.
The properties offer sweeping alpine vistas that cut straight through the daily routine. They provide the kind of clarity a boardroom simply can’t match. It turns out my parents were right all along. You can live a life deeply kind to the planet without sacrificing beauty, joy, or a bit of well-earned magic.
Enjoyed the journey? Let’s break the spell together.
If you’re sick of toxic beige decor, mindless consumption, and the corporate grind, welcome home. This Substack is where we unpack how to live a life deeply kind to the planet without sacrificing soul, beauty, or a bit of well-earned magic.
By subscribing today, you aren’t just signing up for an email—you’re joining the revolution. And as a thank you for backing this studio early:
