Floral designer and TOAST Visual Merchandising Manager, Paula Ellis, has decorated our shop windows with a festive installation inspired by our seasonal concept, The Curious Mind. Behind each, wild foliage entwines with repurposed handmade papers, capturing the spirit of expansive discovery and imagination for Autumn Winter 2025.
“Each year, I look at ways to create festive windows that align with the TOAST ethos to aspire to a more thoughtful way of life,” says Paula, “and do so in a sustainable way whilst using natural materials and supporting craft.”
Adopting a circular approach, Paula sought ways to repurpose materials from a previous TOAST installation. Earlier in the season, we collaborated with Arizona-based paper makers Cave Paper to create a sculptural structure, inspired by the craft of bookbinding and the tactile experience of leafing through the pages of a book.
The paper was made from flax fibres, dyed naturally with ingredients such as pomegranate rinds and black walnut hulls. In a slow and deliberate process, each sheet was layered up to eight times to achieve a surface rich in depth and movement.
These handmade papers were then included in our Slow Sundays gatherings, where our community was invited to join in making notepads and learning the bookbinding process. And now, the remaining sheets have been incorporated into our festive windows.
Paula has designed round, pleated clusters, intended to capture the folds of open books. To add colour and contrast, she introduced handmade lokta paper – the same type used in TOAST festive decorations crafted in Nepal – in saffron and coral shades, bringing warmth and vibrancy to the display. This durable material is the result of a traditional process, in which the inner bark is boiled, pulped, and spread over a wooden frame to create paper.
The paper structures are attached to natural hop vines, cascading in a way that evokes musical rhythm, another chapter in this season’s narrative. Layers of wild thyme, dried euphorbia, and clusters of palm dates add texture, while delicate drips of amaranthus and celastrus berries offset the muted palette and bring out the saffron and coral paper tones.
Harmonising with the values of our Autumn Winter collection, Paula’s process was one of discovery – finding ways to reuse materials and express our seasonal themes in a thoughtful and imaginative way.
You can view our festive window installations in each of our UK and USA shops. Share a photo with us on Instagram using #TOASTbeing
Shop our festive decorations, from hand-painted baubles to hammered metal decorations and lokta paper garlands.
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