By Sage x Clare Founder & Creative Director, Phoebe Bell
I’ve always thought travel is one of the best ways to sharpen your eye.
You can spend months looking at interiors, fashion, art and architecture online, but there is something completely different about being somewhere unfamiliar and noticing, almost instinctively, what makes you stop. The things you photograph without thinking. The spaces you want to linger in. The details that stay with you long after you’ve moved on.
I recently spent two weeks in Seoul with my sister to celebrate our 40th birthdays, and I came home with a camera roll full of exactly that.
Not necessarily inspiration in the most literal sense. I’m not looking at a tiled wall and thinking, that needs to become a cushion. It is more about collecting feelings, combinations, proportions and ideas, then allowing them to sit somewhere in the back of your mind until they resurface later.
And Seoul gave me a lot to think about.
Playfulness is taken seriously
This was probably the thing I noticed first.
There is an incredible sense of playfulness in Seoul, but it rarely feels childish or frivolous. Giant flowers appear in landscaped gardens, retail spaces become oversized vegetable worlds, subway walls are covered in strange little symbols, and bold colour combinations seem to appear everywhere you turn.
What I loved was the confidence behind it. These spaces are playful, sometimes even surreal, but they are still incredibly considered.
It reminded me that good design does not need to become serious in order to feel sophisticated. Often, it is the unexpected element that gives a space its personality and makes you remember it.
A shop can be so much more than a shop
One of the biggest things I took away from Seoul was how many spaces seemed to be designed around an experience rather than simply around selling something.
Retail, hospitality and even public spaces often appeared to start with a bigger question: how should someone feel when they walk in here, what will make them curious, and what will make them want to stay a little longer?
Stores became installations. Cafes became worlds. A display was rarely just a shelf of product, but something theatrical, sculptural or immersive.
There is something quite generous about that approach because, before a customer has bought anything, they have already been given an experience.
It made me think about our own spaces at Sage x Clare too, and how much opportunity there is to create a feeling before someone has even touched the product.
The standard of aesthetics is incredibly high
What struck me over and over again was the level of consideration.
The materials feel intentional, the lighting matters, the graphics matter, the packaging matters, and even the spaces you might otherwise overlook feel resolved. There is a sense that every detail has been thought through, rather than simply added at the end.
Even when a space was minimal, it never felt unfinished, and when it was maximal there was still a sense of discipline underneath it all.
That was probably one of the most inspiring things for me because Seoul can be incredibly visually stimulating, yet the best spaces still feel edited and controlled. It is a reminder that “more” only really works when the decisions behind it are strong.
Colour and texture are used with conviction
Korea was also a lesson in not being timid.
Cobalt blue walls, lacquered orange floors, pink shopfronts, deep red joinery, rough concrete beside timber, gloss against matte, and pattern layered with even more pattern. What could easily feel chaotic somehow feels deliberate.
The colour rarely seemed decorative simply for decoration’s sake. More often, it defined the mood of the whole space and became part of the experience of being there.
That resonated with me because colour at Sage x Clare has never felt like an afterthought either. It can completely change how you experience a room, making something feel energetic, nostalgic, warm, strange or joyful before you have consciously understood why.
Seoul made me want to push that instinct even further.
Old and new don’t have to compete
Some of my favourite moments were where traditional Korean architecture and contemporary design existed side by side.
You might walk out of a polished concept store and, within minutes, find yourself in a narrow lane lined with timber buildings and tiled roofs. In other places, beautifully restored traditional structures housed interiors that felt incredibly modern.
Rather than competing, the contrast made both feel stronger.
There is sometimes a tendency in design to make everything belong to the same language, but Korea reminded me how interesting tension can be. Old timber beside stainless steel. Handmade finishes against something highly engineered. Decorative details next to something stark and minimal.
Sometimes the combination that should not work is exactly what gives a space its character.
And maybe that’s the real reason I keep travelling
I don’t think you necessarily come home from a trip with one big idea.
More often, you come home with hundreds of small ones: a colour combination you would never have put together, an unusual way of displaying something, a material you noticed, a feeling a room gave you, or a shop you stayed in far longer than you expected to.
They all get filed away somewhere.
Then, months later, one resurfaces while you are working on a collection, styling a shoot, talking through a new space with the team, or simply trying to solve a creative problem in a different way.
That, to me, is the best kind of design education because you are not necessarily travelling with the intention of finding inspiration.
You are just paying attention.