No Place Like Home at Sayers Home
When interior designers create display homes rather than personal havens, our living spaces lose their important feature – ourselves. But one hidden Hasting St boutique is redefining how we decorate, as Georgia Beard discovers.
As you walk in from Hastings Street, Sayers Home feels less like a homewares store and more like a sculptural gallery.
Vases and vessels sit on display in surreal shapes. Amorphous candelabras, smooth kitchenware and actual decorative sculptures fill the spaces between. There’s even an oversized egg carved from limestone in the corner.
Everything is drawn in soft lines and bold colours, but no two products are the same. Each declares its own space on the shelves. With such a sense of exclusivity, it’s clear this home décor doesn’t come off a factory line.
After moving from New Zealand to Noosa with her family and three pieces of furniture, Jess Hitchcock founded Sayers Home with exclusivity in mind. She sources homewares from chic and eccentric designers across the globe – designers you wouldn’t find in any Australian department store.
“When we moved here, I went to decorate our home and I struggled,” she said. “I spent heaps of time on Pinterest designing what I wanted my house to look like, and I came across all these brands I’d never heard of before and I fell in love with them.”
Inspired to bring new and unusual homewares into Australia, Jess reached out to these brands and received positive responses. With stock on the way, she found and fitted out the space in Bay Village just before Christmas.
Honouring the name passed down from Jess’s grandmother, Jess believes Sayers Home gives the business a personal touch and says to shoppers ‘welcome to our home.’ Now she attracts a national customer base, from Noosa locals to Sydneysiders to Melburnians.
“Our goal is to promote and showcase artists and design studios from around the world,” she said. “For a lot of brands, we are the only stockists on the other side of the world. It’s appealing to people when they’re buying pieces no one else has.”
Working with artists ensures every product on show is handcrafted rather than mass-produced, leaving unique imperfections in each version of one design.
This means every customer walks out of the store with a product that is distinctly their own.
“We have a mid-century modern theme and focus more on colour, texture and form,” Jess said. “Nothing has a standard shape, and everything has detailing.”
Alongside her commitment to originality in all her products, Jess buys her stock from brands with sustainability and ethics in mind.
Her collection of brass candleholders from Fourth St have been hand-made by local artisans in India; stoneware from Sanna Völker and Fourth St, like her limestone egg, have been fashioned from quarry off-cuts in Barcelona and New Zealand.
There is true diversity in Sayers Home, inspiring interiors beyond short-lived trends and overdone coastal style.
“We don’t sell homewares you just pick up, chuck on a shelf and never think about again. I want you to have a deeper connection to a piece,” Jess said.
“You put thought into the clothing you wear, the handbags, the way you present yourself. Your home should also be a representation of who you are internally.
“If you put a bit more thought into it, it makes you feel homely, comfy and like you belong there. I just find it so much more appealing and uplifting.”
Jess said it’s easy to get stuck constantly redecorating a home with mass-produced products. To capture your personality in a space, she recommends quality over quantity and searching for pops of colour.
“A lot of people love the idea of having the artsy, sculptural pieces and the colour, but they don’t know where to put it and what to put it with,” she said.
Sayers Home offers interior styling advice for customers who may not know where to start. Whether you live local or abroad, you can bring photos of your space into the store or connect over email and phone for consultations on décor. Jess then helps to pair items together, determine colour schemes and transform your décor from superficial to statement.
This winter, new collections will furnish the Sayers Home shelves. From Fourth St’s upcoming high-end pieces to Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s cocktail and wine glassware to Slowdown Studio’s adult and baby-sized blankets – each handknitted from recycled cotton and designed by artists across the world – all inspire individuality in your home.
Sayers Home itself is set to make a statement with a fresh fit-out coming in early September. Jess is embracing the creative potential of décor, redesigning her interior with the layout of an art gallery.
“The fit-out is based on making us a destination store, where it’s an experience to come and see our products,” she said.
From there, Jess plans to expand Sayers Home beyond Hastings and open boutiques in Sydney or Melbourne. But she won’t be slipping into the mainstream anytime soon. While reimagining homes everywhere, Jess’s décor will always emulate the allure of a prized artistic masterpiece.
