Margaret Howell’s 2027 calendar and new book look at design through everyday life
Personal photographs fill the 2027 calendar, a London exhibition runs until 15 November, and Life and Work expands the view in an English–Japanese edition.
Margaret Howell has gathered photographs taken over many years into her 2027 calendar, Photographs by Margaret Howell. A display with the same title runs at her Wigmore Street shop in London from 23 October to 15 November 2026. Published alongside it, Margaret Howell: Life and Work connects clothing design with homes, objects and everyday surroundings. For readers familiar with her shirts and outerwear, the focus shifts towards how the designer observes life beyond garments.
A calendar built from her own everyday images
Each month of the 2027 calendar uses a photograph Howell took with a Nikon SLR or smartphone, spanning different decades. Rather than organize a single landscape category, the selection approaches places, objects and details, including Suffolk beach walks and self-images in her Blackheath workroom. The camera is a recording tool; attention to surfaces, light and accidental compositions connects the pictures.
An interior self-image retains the relationship between railing, light and working surroundings.
Hanging fabrics, an interior railing and an isolated tree in the published photographs are not sets constructed for new clothes. Drape, variations in wall colour and the outline of branches carry their own rhythms. The calendar distributes a designer’s habit of gathering visual observations across the year, rather than merely replacing fashion campaign images with twelve decorative pictures.
Life and Work joins living and making
Published by Shueisha, the new book is confirmed by the official product information as a bilingual English and Japanese edition. It moves through Howell’s Suffolk home, furniture, objects and surrounding scenery, as well as her work with Somerset fabric producer Fox Brothers and her London Shirtmaking Workroom. Beyond presenting a chronology of clothes, it invites readers to consider relationships between material decisions and the organization of a maker’s domestic environment.
For menswear readers, that offers a useful direction: notice how a fabric conveys weight, why furniture retains signs of use and how a workspace supports repeated making. These observations cannot automatically be assigned as the inspiration for a particular collection. They can, however, illuminate a sustained interest in usefulness and materials, allowing an appreciation of design to begin somewhere other than the newest product.
Exhibition, calendar and book offer different ways of looking
The Wigmore Street display returns the photographs to a physical setting where their scale and arrangement can be compared. The calendar extends looking through a monthly change of page, while the book supplies longer accounts of living and production. Together, walls, desktops and reading create different rhythms of attention beyond a brief encounter on a social feed.
An isolated tree and grass form another observation from everyday life.
The UK official website lists the calendar at £18 and the book at £35. They are sold separately, with international shipping and other charges governed by checkout conditions. Check the official 2027 calendar page and Life and Work product page for editions and availability. The London display ends on 15 November 2026: the calendar’s 2027 title should not be mistaken for the exhibition year.
