Our Story
Soft & Wild was born from a moment of quiet certainty. After years spent building national brands for two interior décor businesses, founder Jensen found himself mid-conversation with an interior designer and realised, with sudden clarity, that this was exactly where he wanted to be — talking about colour theory and proportion and the way a single object can change how a room feels. Not working for someone else’s vision, but building his own.
Jensen is a ceramicist and designer with a background in photography and e-commerce, and Soft & Wild is the place where all of that converges. It is a shop, yes — but it is also something closer to a curated space: somewhere between a well-stocked boutique and the instinct of a designer who knows exactly what a room needs next.
We are based on the Wirral, a stretch of peninsula between the Dee and the Mersey that is quietly one of the most beautiful parts of England. The light here is clean and particular — a result of the microclimate that softens the air and opens the sky. From our doorstep we can see the rugged coastline of North Wales. Down the road are Ness Gardens, a botanical wonder founded in 1898, and the independent shops and gallery spaces tucked into the streets of West Kirby and Heswall. Liverpool and Manchester are close enough for gallery visits and design conventions. All of it feeds into what we do.
Soft & Wild is just launched, and it is already in motion. That feels right.
Our Philosophy
The name comes from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese:
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.”
It is a line about permission. About trusting what draws you in.
For us, it speaks to something we believe about the home. We move through wild lives — demanding, fast, full — and the home is where we return. Not to escape, but to restore. To gather ourselves before we go back out into the world. The things we choose to surround ourselves with are not trivial. They are the texture of that restoration.
Soft & Wild is a store that moves. Trends shift quickly and we move with them — not chasing, but leading. Our designers are given genuine freedom to explore, to find the suppliers and pieces that feel alive right now, and to build collections around them. Over time, we hope those designers and their individual sensibilities will become something customers seek out — a reason to come back, to see what’s arrived, to add the next piece to a home that is always, quietly, evolving.
We don’t design for a single kind of customer, because we don’t believe people are single kinds of person. Every home is a collection of rooms with different moods and different purposes. A bedroom doesn’t have to be quiet if your personality isn’t. A dining room wall can hold art that makes dinner feel like an occasion. We curate collections that give people the materials to explore their own taste — to push at it, expand it, surprise themselves.
That is what we are here for. Not to tell you what your home should look like, but to show you what it could.
Soft & Wild — The Wirral, England.