Design dealer, furniture-interior designer, shop owner, Evening Standard columnist, and party monster: Jermaine Gallacher is MATCHESFASHON’s first homeware Innovator. Last man standing on a night out in Soho and first-in-line at Pimlico’s Capital Carboot sale, Gallacher has the kind of whirlwind energy that gets a person up at 4am every day — even if he’s been out all night.

‘I get things done by wanting to do them, and there is so much that I want to do.’

Gallacher made his name as a design dealer selling one-off objets d’art and decorative pieces, first from a stall in Spitalfields market, then through a succession of shops in Lower Marsh, Soho, Dalston, and Lisbon. ‘It was always finding spaces and then finding the right piece of furniture,’ he says. After the opening of his first showroom with restaurant consultant Coco Bayley and Lant Street Wine’s director Ben Wilcock, friends encouraged Gallacher to tackle interior projects, like Bar Crispin in Soho, and even a barrister’s office. ‘Interior design is kind of service industry in a way because you’re stuck between a client and architect, project manager,’ he says.

‘You’re kind of a darling creative. It’s very different to sourcing things. It’s a lot of work. Luckily, I’m a bit of a charlatan; I’ll do anything you want.’

Gallacher has lived near his Lant Street showroom in Borough for the past 12 years, in the same Housing Association flat he moved into while studying BA Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts. ‘I went on the housing list while I was at Camberwell because I knew it was going to be really expensive to rent in London,’ he says. ‘I knew that this would give me a stable base. In a fortuitous set of circumstances, I got offered this place and couldn’t turn it down.’

Back then, the small basement flat was more party destination than home. ‘I didn’t even have a cooker for two years,’ says Gallacher. ‘I kept my creepers in the kitchen cupboards, and I used to boil noodles in my kettle.’ In the decade since, Gallacher’s love for the weird and wonderful has endured – the designer is equally happy befriending sex shop proprietors in Soho as he is in the company of ‘really rich people’.

‘I like the high and the low. I love things being very glamorous, and I like filth.’

During lockdown, Gallacher finally turned his eye to his own home, which had remained largely unchanged since his arrival back in 2010. For a daybed in his living room, he sourced a selection of fabrics from a World of Interiors sample sale. He swabbed the flat’s low ceilings and walls in optimistic shades of blue and yellow, and transformed his bedroom by shrouding the small space in ceiling-height canvas hand-painted a shade of peach. But despite an impressive visitors’ book (husband-and-wife duo Emily Bode and Aaron Aujla of Bode came over recently), Gallacher’s flat retains the designer’s signature high-low charm; just don’t sit down without checking for oil stains first.

If Jermaine Gallacher turned himself, Prince-like, into a symbol, it’d be a zigzag, a shape he has drawn from childhood all the way through to his fine art degree. ‘My tutor at Camberwell said, “Oh my god, your drawings are like Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group”,’ he says. ‘I had never heard of them and suddenly he opened the whole world.’ Drawn, painted, wrought in iron and steel: zigzags appear everywhere in Gallacher’s flat, an unapologetic exclamation mark demanding attention. The tacit curve and baby-pink hue of Italian architect Sottsass’s Ultrafragola mirror they are most definitely not.

In Gallacher’s first collection for MATCHESFASHION, the newest member of our Innovators programme riffs on his own eclectic carboot-sale finds. A metal drinks holder with a zigzagged stem is given new life as a joyful series of candlesnuffers, candlesticks, bookends and drinks holders in steel-coated white, red, orange, yellow, blue and black. Part sculpture, part home décor, Jermaine Gallacher’s zigzags are designed for every home in the spirit of generosity. ‘When I see something, I think: God, everyone should have that.’

Gallacher is the first to point out that zigzags are not original, having featured everywhere from cave art and the Cooper Bison Skull (the oldest known painted object in North America) to Islamic, Byzantine, Norman, and Romanesque architecture. ‘They’ve been around probably since the dawn of time, I think they must be one of the oldest [symbols],’ he says. ‘And that’s what I quite like about it as well. It’s very prehistoric. It’s been rehashed from forever – Art Deco right up until now. I love that crudeness and that sharpness, and I also really like the shadows they give off.’

‘I’ve had lots of things come through my fingers,’ Gallacher says. ‘But there are a few things that I keep because I want to live with them. And those things that I live with, I think maybe other people might like to live with.’  

What’s next for the homeware Innovator? With plenty of interior design projects and an anticipated second collection for MATCHESFASHION in the pipeline, Gallacher is unlikely to get bored anytime soon, but if he does, there’s always the nightclub he’s dreaming up in Soho. ‘I’d love to do a club and I’d love to do the interiors,’ he says. ‘I think it’s so fucking needed.’  

‘It would be very sexy,’ Gallacher concludes. ‘The glamourpuss is back again.’

PHOTOGRAPHER CHARLIE CUMMINGS. STYLIST ALESHA JIVANDA. FASHION ASSISTANT EASHANI PANCHAL. CREATIVE PRODUCTION DIRECTOR TOMASINA LEBUS. CREATIVE PRODUCTION MANAGER SAMANTHA TREYVAUD.