We visit Weirdstock founder Johanna at her South East London home, where mid-century finds sit alongside family treasures, Dallas has several favourite seats, and running a business occasionally requires a schnauzer-shaped form of therapy.
A home shaped by the things you love
Johanna’s home makes sense once you start hearing about the things she loves.
There’s mid-century design, colour and vintage furniture. There’s music from the 60s, 70s and 80s. There are things brought home from travels and things that have been in her family for decades. Nothing feels tied to one particular period or rule.
“Maximalism, I think, is my style.”
Some of that can be traced back to her grandparents’ house.
Johanna describes it as eclectic, a mixture of pieces from different decades rather than anything particularly coordinated. It was simply a fun place to be. Her love of music came into it too, leading her towards vintage fashion and, eventually, influencing the way she thought about interiors.
Among the things she has kept are pieces that belonged to her granny: glassware, a stainless-steel butter dish and other small objects her mum saved for her. Johanna kept them wrapped up while she was renting, waiting until she finally had a home in which to use them.
Ask what she would rescue if the house were on fire, after Ben and Dallas, of course, and those are the things she thinks about first. The family pieces. The things that cannot really be replaced. Perhaps some of the objects collected abroad, like a little cherub she brought back from Mexico. Furniture can, eventually, be found again. The stories attached to things are harder to replace.
And then there’s Dallas
Dallas arrived during lockdown, although Johanna had always known a dog was part of the plan. In fact, Ben had apparently been informed from their very first date.
When they bought their house in 2019 and were finally no longer renting, the time had come. Both slightly allergic, they looked for a hypoallergenic breed before settling on a miniature schnauzer.
Dallas fitted into their lives remarkably easily.
She has several favourite spots around the house, including a bed near Johanna’s workspace and a sofa upstairs overlooking the garden, where she keeps an eye on passing cats and foxes. Mostly, though, she potters.
“She’s quite an independent dog.”
In summer, the back door stays open and Dallas moves between the house and garden, occasionally sitting with Johanna before deciding she has had enough and relocating elsewhere.
But when she is actually needed, she seems to know.
“She’s a therapy dog.”
A four-legged reset button
Running a business can make it difficult to separate yourself from the thing you are building.
Johanna knows that feeling well.
As the founder of Weirdstock, she is involved in every part of the business, which means the difficult bits can feel personal too. When the stress starts to take over, Dallas provides something of a reset.
“If I’m feeling stressed, then I need to recalibrate. I need to come and get a cuddle.”
It puts things into perspective, she says. It calms her down.
There is the physical interruption too. Working from home without a dog, Johanna thinks there would probably be days when she simply didn’t leave the house.
Dallas makes that impossible.
Their morning walk through Shrewsbury Park has effectively become Johanna’s commute. She gets outside, spends time in the greenery and catches up with the same group of dog walkers before returning home and beginning work.
Those walks have created something else too: a community.
Most of the friends Johanna and Ben now have locally came into their lives through their dogs. Dallas was initially nervous joining the established pack at the park, but gradually found her place, with some of the bigger dogs now looking out for her.
“If people ever ask how do you make friends, you just get a dog.”
Or, Johanna adds, start a business.
From an idea to Weirdstock
The two, in her case, have become fairly intertwined.
Before Weirdstock, Johanna worked in corporate marketing. Voluntary redundancy gave her the opportunity to rethink what she wanted to do next, and she knew she wanted something more creative.
Entrepreneurship hadn’t necessarily been the plan.
Then she started thinking about bedding.
Her love of vintage design, mid-century interiors, colour and maximalism made her wonder why it was so difficult to find bedding that shared the same sensibility, without compromising on quality or sustainability.
“You either get luxury and sustainable, but it’s white or neutral, or you get fun and it’s cheap and scratchy.”
So she decided to make the thing she couldn’t find.
Weirdstock’s bedding is produced in India, where Johanna worked with an ethical supply-chain consultant to find manufacturers that could meet the organic and ethical standards she wanted for the brand. She readily admits she entered the whole process somewhat naively.
Which may have helped.
“If I knew how hard it was going to be, I wouldn’t have done it.”
The creative side still comes back to the things Johanna has always loved.
Travel. Art. Vintage magazines. Music. Old prints.
Her Nan’s House collection takes cottage-core florals and pushes them somewhere more playful with neon, psychedelic ruffles and knitted textures.
Even the names, Thelma, Gladys and Gloria, came from asking Weirdstock’s customers and Instagram community for their favourite “Nana names”.
Sometimes you just bring the bedding anyway
One of Weirdstock’s biggest collaborations started rather informally.
Johanna had long followed a group of hotels in Ibiza because she loved their interiors, from Palm Springs and retro Havana to 80s and Art Deco influences.
When Ben travelled there for a stag weekend last summer, Johanna joined him afterwards and chose to stay at one of the hotels.
Before travelling, she messaged the founder on Instagram. They talked about possibly meeting or her gifting some Weirdstock pieces, but nothing was ever properly arranged.
Johanna packed them anyway.
Then, while staying at the hotel, she spotted him in the middle of a photoshoot.
Fresh from the beach, she walked over and introduced herself.
“I brought the stuff with me anyway. I’d love to gift you.”
She left everything at reception.
The next day, he messaged. He loved it and wanted to talk about collaborating.
That chance encounter became a collection. Johanna returned to Ibiza for a photoshoot in April, the collaboration launched in June, and another trip followed for a pop-up.
There is probably a business lesson in there about persistence and putting yourself forward.
Or perhaps it is simpler than that.
Sometimes you send the Instagram message.
