Home Office Space: Sarah Tankel Ellis and Philippa Bloom

Sarah and Philippa are the two stylists behind We Are Twinset. They both also work full time as Fashion Editors – so if anyone knows about multi-tasking and ‘making it work’, it’s these two. Here they kindly take time out from their already super busy routine (Philippa is actually 9 months pregnant as I upload this!). To answer my questions about their home office space.

Do you share a desk or share time between each others house?

With us both working full time as stylists in our day jobs our ‘workspace’ for Twinset has many guises. Whether it’s a console table turned desk in Sarah’s spare room at her house or Philippa’s dining room table. We really enjoy working from home when it comes to the more admin and organisational side of WAT. (we’ve even been known to lie on the bed with our laptops!)

Thankfully we only live about fifteen minutes away from each other so we take it in turns whose house we work at (and who buys lunch!)

How do you balance work/life/blog?

For us it’s a constant juggle, our day jobs are quite high pressured with lots of running around and we have to work hard to balance our time so we can fit in Twinset as well. First and foremost, this boils down to organisation. We have designated times for shooting and emails and admin; as well as balancing the workload between us as much as possible. If one of us is particularly stressed then the other takes over, our lifeline is WhatsApp and our daily messages are ten to the dozen!

How important is it that your home office space is chic/ reflects your work?

As you can imagine, a chic workspace is as important to us as a luxe looking shoot, but without an actual office it’s a more pieced together type of vibe. We have some of our favourite accessories that we’ve picked up on the way at both of our houses. Lots of gems from Etsy, Kikki K and H&M Home make up the majority of our workspace. And, we have very little clutter anything non essential is a no go.

What can’t you live without on your desk?

Our Apple Macs aside, what seriously keeps us in check is our Smythson diaries, we literally can’t live without them. We love to see everything written down, whether it’s our day to day schedule or our to do lists. Personalised notepads and cards from Studio Sarah are another of our essentials and again it boils down to the joy of writing everything down. Our initial mugs filled with endless cups of herbal tea are another must have and as long as we have these we are good to go!

How do you keep organised?

Everything has a place and we try to keep it that way. Beauty props and products reside in Sarah’s house in a storage unit (obviously separated into categories!). Paperwork is Philippa’s forte and she takes charge of invoices and receipts, chicly organised in coloured folders. We also both have rails of new things that we are planning to shoot, items that have been sent to us and things that we call in. We find it so much easier to style up our outfits when we can see them. Rose gold hangers from Primark are essential to keep the vibe!

Realistically, what is your workwear attire?

We often laugh that as soon as we are done shooting for the day and it’s time to hit the admin side of the blog, the first thing we do is get on our ‘comfys’ as we like to call them. Cashmere trackies from M&S and a cute logo tee or jumper from Hush are our go to casual attire. For meetings and shoots its much more together looks (usually ripped jeans and shirt / blazer combo) but at home we are all about the comfort!

What inspires you in or around your desk area?

We swear by moodboards (something we’ve learnt to love as stylists) and are always looking for inspiration from magazines, Pinterest and our obsession with fashion books. When brainstorming our shoots for the blog we have loads of references so we are really clear on what we want things to look like. It makes things run much smoother and we always know we are on the same page. Fresh and faux flowers are a no brainer, give us anything white and green and we are as happy as can be. They are also essential props for us when it comes to our flatlays! Another guilty pleasure is candles and Jo Malone Oud & Bergamot and Diptique’s Baies are our absolute faves. Plus, when we finish them they make excellent storage holders for pens, pencils and make up brushes.

Thanks so much girls for showing us how it’s done. As someone who used to work on both a a magazine whilst running a blog, I know how hard it is to do both, and these girls are really managing to do it all.