July was bonkers. After years of dearly wanting to win both, I won my professional body BIID's Continuing Professional Development award swiftly followed by PETA's Compassionate Designer 23 award.

I admire the dedication and endless ways the People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) work to highlight the abuse and curelty to animals, who cohabit our planet. Their purposeful motto reads "Anmals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment or abuse in any other way". 

Sadly they have so much work to do. 

I am so thankful for their undercover investigations which formed the basis for the Vegan Design course I took in 2017. Having been educated in vegan design during my 10 years as a designer for The Body Shop I thought I had it covered. But of course when you look into materials used in residential interior design, there is a whole host of cruelty I hadn't been aware of.  Without those hard to watch investigations, it would have been pure theory. 

Working as an interior designer, there are so many positive ways we can use more regenerative materials - there is no need to use animal products which have a negative impact. This impact is on workers, health, ecology, land and water use, fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. It's so much more complex than  the treatment of animals - which alone is bad enough.

It's a great honour to win this important award.  Nothing else will come near to this!  I hope I can continue to highlight this impact to my industry and inspire others - showing there's a more positive way to produce beautiful and luxurous spaces.

Luxury should  not mean cruelty.