In 1993, a young interior designer who had spent her twenties working for the decorator Nicky Haslam opened a single shop in London's Holland Park. She had no grand plan, only a stall's worth of hand-embroidered tea towels and a taste for the kind of prints her own grandmother might have owned. Cath Kidston later described the whole thing as a happy accident, and in a sense it was: what started as a sideline in vintage fabric and flea market finds became, within two decades, a genuinely British design phenomenon.
She gave the look a name of her own, modern vintage, and it stuck because it described something real: roses and polka dots and ticking stripes, drawn with a light, almost naive hand, set against colours too cheerful to be truly antique. By the mid 2010s there were well over a hundred shops, including a flagship on Piccadilly next to Fortnum & Mason, and the brand had become, half fondly and half despairingly, a shorthand for a certain kind of English femininity. Kidston herself once joked that her shops provoked a Marmite reaction, people either loved them completely or couldn't stand the sight of another spot of gingham. Either way, nobody was ever neutral about it.
"Modern vintage was Cath Kidston's own phrase, and it earned its place: roses and stripes with a light hand, in colours too cheerful to be truly antique."
A House Built on Play
Look at the wallpaper range now and it is easy to see why the nursery became Kidston's natural home. Tractors, toadstools, puppies and pandas turn up here with the same unbothered charm as her florals, drawn for a child's eye but detailed enough to hold an adult's attention too. It is a rare kind of print that works equally well in a playroom and a downstairs loo, and this is exactly that kind.
Tractor, Multi, Cath Kidston
Mushrooms, Multi, Cath Kidston
Chihuahua Island, Cream, Cath Kidston SS26
Puppy Dream Floral, Sage Green, Cath Kidston SS26
The Garden Never Really Left
Away from the nursery, the brand's real inheritance shows itself: a very English love of the garden, rendered in bunches, sprigs and trailing stems rather than anything too formal. A strawberry print here, a spray of florals there, and always a stripe waiting in the wings for anyone who wants pattern without quite so much of it. None of it asks to be taken too seriously, which might be the most modern thing about it.
Painted Kingdom, Natural, Cath Kidston
Spitalfield Bunches, Sage Green, Cath Kidston SS26
Strawberry Spring, Cath Kidston
"None of it asks to be taken too seriously, which might be the most modern thing about it."
Queenie's London, Cream, Cath Kidston SS26
Canopy Stripe, Pink and Red, Cath Kidston
The company itself has changed hands more than once since, and the name now sits within Next, who bought the archive and the intellectual property in 2023. The prints have outlasted the business that first made them, which is probably the surest sign that Kidston was onto something real. As ever, order a sample before committing a whole wall, colour reads differently by lamplight than it does on a screen, and most of these papers are non-woven and straightforward to hang yourself.
Ready to Bring Some Modern Vintage Home?
Browse the full Cath Kidston wallpaper collection, including its playful children's rooms and nursery designs and gentler florals, or order a sample first to see the colours properly in your own light.
