& Other Stories Unisex Home Accessories: Where Personal Style Meets Everyday Living

There is something quietly revolutionary about the way & Other Stories approaches home. The Swedish brand, born from the Hennes & Mauritz Group in 2013, built its reputation on clothing that refused to be categorized too neatly — pieces that moved between genders, aesthetics, and occasions with an easy confidence. When that same philosophy was carried into the home category, it created something genuinely rare in the interior design market: objects that feel personal without being prescriptive, and beautiful without being exclusive.

The phrase “unisex home accessory” might sound like a marketing invention, but when you spend time with & Other Stories’ home collections, you begin to understand that it describes something real. These are objects designed to belong to a space, not to a person of a particular gender. They ask no questions about who you are when you reach for them. They simply exist, beautifully, within whatever environment you have built for yourself.

This post explores what makes & Other Stories’ approach to unisex home accessories so compelling, what kinds of pieces define the range, how to incorporate them into your own interiors, and why this design philosophy might represent the most interesting direction in contemporary home styling.

The Philosophy Behind & Other Stories at Home

Before diving into the accessories themselves, it is worth understanding the world & Other Stories has always been trying to build. From its very first collections, the brand operated on the idea that creativity does not belong to one kind of person. Its fashion ateliers in Paris, Stockholm, and Los Angeles each brought distinct influences, but all shared a commitment to the idea that style is something you develop through curiosity, not something assigned to you.

This ethos translates directly to home. When the brand began offering candles, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and decorative objects, the question was never “who is this for?” The question was always “is this beautiful, is this well-made, and does it fit a life lived with intention?”

The answer to all three questions, across much of the range, is yes. And that is precisely why the home accessories resonate so strongly with such a wide audience. Students decorating a first apartment find them just as easily as established professionals refreshing a living room. People who identify with maximalist interiors and people who lean toward minimalism both find an entry point. The pieces do not demand a particular kind of home. They adapt.

Ceramics and Stoneware: Objects That Tell Their Own Story

Among the most beloved categories in & Other Stories’ home range is ceramics. The brand has long worked with small artisan producers to create pieces that carry the marks of hand-making — slight irregularities in form, glazes that pool or shift in tone, textures that invite touch. These are not the factory-perfect objects of mainstream homeware. They are things that feel alive.

A typical collection might include stoneware mugs with thick, satisfying walls and handles that sit comfortably in any hand regardless of size. You might find small bowls glazed in muted earthy tones — warm terracotta, dusty sage, pale sand — that work as catch-alls, candle holders, or simply as objects to admire on a shelf. Vases range from narrow-necked bud vases that look equally at home on a bathroom shelf or a kitchen windowsill to broader, more architecturally interesting forms that can anchor a coffee table.

What makes these pieces genuinely unisex is not just their neutral color palette, though that certainly plays a role. It is their refusal to gesture toward either a traditionally “masculine” or “feminine” aesthetic. There is nothing fussy or overly decorative about them, but neither are they stark or cold. They occupy the increasingly crowded and genuinely interesting space between those poles, where most real people actually live.

A set of & Other Stories stoneware mugs placed in a kitchen immediately communicates something about the person who chose them: that they have considered their space, that they value craft, and that they are not interested in the performative gender signaling that so much homeware still relies on.

Candles and Home Fragrance: Atmosphere Without Apology

Few home accessories are as intimate as candles, and few categories reveal as much about a brand’s design intelligence. & Other Stories’ approach to candles and home fragrance is notably confident. The scents tend to move away from the aggressively floral or sweet end of the spectrum toward something more complex — woody, smoky, green, mineral, or warmly resinous. These are not scents that have been formulated to appeal to one half of the population. They are simply good scents.

The vessels are typically clean and architectural. Matte glass in black, cream, or amber. Simple printed labels. Occasionally a more decorative container that still reads as considered rather than ornate. The visual language of the candle range is very much in keeping with the rest of the brand’s aesthetic: contemporary, quality-focused, and free of unnecessary decoration.

Using a candle from & Other Stories in a shared living space, or giving one as a gift to someone whose taste you are not entirely sure about, carries very little risk of misjudgment. The pieces are sophisticated without being intimidating. They work in a spare, Scandinavian-influenced interior just as readily as they work in a warmer, more layered space filled with textiles and vintage finds.

The room sprays and fragrance diffusers in the range carry the same sense of considered restraint. They are objects you might display rather than hide, which is exactly how home fragrance accessories should be designed.

Glassware: Functional Beauty for Everyday Use

The glassware offerings from & Other Stories have always been one of the more underappreciated parts of the home range. There is a tendency to overlook glassware as purely functional, but well-designed glass can transform the experience of drinking — and, more broadly, the experience of being in a room.

& Other Stories’ glassware tends toward the sculptural end of functional. Tumblers with satisfying weight and a slight irregularity that catches light. Wine glasses with stems that are slender enough to look elegant but robust enough for actual daily use. Carafes that sit beautifully on a dining table whether they are holding water, wine, or just catching the afternoon light.

The color palette in the glassware range often introduces the most interesting dimension of the home collection. Soft amber, pale green, smoky grey — these are colors that add visual warmth to a table setting without overwhelming it, and they are colors that do not read as gendered at all. They are simply pleasing.

What makes this category particularly notable in the context of unisex design is that glassware is one of those domestic categories where gender marketing has historically been most persistent. Brands have long designed “his and hers” sets, or implicitly coded barware as masculine and delicate crystal as feminine. & Other Stories sidesteps all of that completely. The glassware is simply for people who drink things and want those things to taste and feel and look good.

Textiles: Softness Without Sweetness

The textile offerings — cushion covers, throws, bath towels, and occasionally bedding — are where & Other Stories’ home range shows perhaps its greatest range of influence. The brand’s fashion background is most visible here, in the way texture and drape and proportion are all considered with the same care as they would be in clothing.

Throws tend to come in substantial weights with an honest, unfussy quality. Chunky knits in undyed or naturally toned wools. Linen throws with a loose weave that softens with washing. The color palette for textiles is typically warm but not saccharine — terracotta, oatmeal, deep slate, muted olive. Nothing that shouts, everything that adds.

Cushion covers often show the brand’s more playful side, with occasional forays into tactile surface treatments — ribbing, boucle, velvet — that add interest without demanding a particular aesthetic context to work in. A ribbed cotton cushion cover in warm cream looks as right on a leather sofa in a pared-back interior as it does on a linen sofa in a more relaxed, layered room.

Bath textiles from & Other Stories typically share the same quality-focused restraint as the rest of the range. Waffle-weave towels, simple striped bathrobes, straightforward but well-made bath mats. These are the kinds of pieces that elevate the experience of a bathroom without requiring a renovation or a particular design vision to support them.

Decorative Objects: When Art and Utility Meet

Perhaps the most expressive part of the & Other Stories home range is the category that exists somewhere between pure decoration and quiet utility. Small sculptural objects, paperweights, resin or marble objects, incense holders, trays, and occasional bold-statement pieces that function more as art than as accessories.

This is where the brand’s relationship with artists and independent makers becomes most visible. Over the years, & Other Stories has collaborated with ceramicists, glassblowers, jewelers, and artists to create pieces that are genuinely collectible. Limited-edition objects that carry a distinct creative vision alongside the brand’s own aesthetic framework.

These pieces are often the hardest to categorize, which is part of what makes them so interesting. A hand-thrown ceramic incense holder could sit on a desk, a bathroom shelf, a kitchen surface, or a bedside table. A marble tray might hold jewelry, hold keys, hold nothing at all and simply look beautiful on a console. A sculptural resin object might be entirely without function and entirely necessary.

The gender-neutral quality of these pieces comes from their focus on form and material rather than motif. There are no florals coded for one gender, no industrial references coded for another. There are just shapes, textures, materials, and the particular quality of light that each one catches.

How to Style & Other Stories Home Accessories in Your Space

Understanding the pieces is one thing; knowing how to use them is another. The beauty of & Other Stories’ home range is that it rarely demands a total overhaul of your existing space. These are accessories in the truest sense — additions that enhance what is already there rather than replacing it.

A few principles that tend to work well when incorporating these pieces:

Think about material conversation. & Other Stories’ ceramics, with their earthy tones and handmade textures, naturally want to be grouped with natural materials. Place a stoneware vase near a wooden bowl or a linen throw and the relationship between them will feel considered and cohesive. Avoid putting them next to anything too high-gloss or too synthetic.

Allow repetition. One of the simplest and most effective ways to use home accessories is to repeat a material or a color across a space. Two or three pieces from & Other Stories in the same tonal family — perhaps an amber glass vase, a terracotta candle vessel, and an oatmeal-colored cushion cover — will create a visual thread through a room that feels intentional without being overdone.

Let function lead. The best home accessories are the ones you actually use. A beautiful mug that you reach for every morning is more valuable to your space than a decorative object that you dust. When choosing pieces from the range, prioritize the things that will enter your daily routine. A candle you light every evening. A throw you pull around yourself while reading. A carafe you fill with water and put on your desk. Function makes objects feel at home in a way that pure decoration rarely can.

Mix with older pieces. & Other Stories’ home accessories are not designed to be purchased as a complete set and arranged as a display. They are designed to be lived with, which means they work best when they are mixed with things you have acquired over time — a vintage ceramic, a cherished mug, a piece of driftwood you picked up somewhere. The lack of rigid aesthetic identity in the brand’s pieces is actually their greatest strength here. They slip into existing spaces without asserting dominance.

Why Unisex Home Accessories Matter Right Now

The conversation around gender in interiors is changing. For a long time, the design industry organized itself around assumptions about who lived in which kinds of spaces and what they wanted those spaces to say about them. These assumptions were limiting for everyone, and they are increasingly being dismantled.

& Other Stories’ approach to home accessories is part of a broader shift in the market toward objects that prioritize quality, craft, and aesthetic intelligence over demographic targeting. When a candle is designed to smell good and look beautiful rather than to appeal to women between 25 and 45, it becomes a better candle. When a ceramic mug is designed to be pleasurable to hold and use rather than to signal a particular lifestyle, it becomes a better mug.

The unisex home accessory is not a niche category or a progressive statement. It is simply good design practice. The best objects have always been the ones that transcend demographic targeting and become genuinely universal. What & Other Stories has done particularly well is make that universality feel warm and approachable rather than clinical or austere.

In an era when more people are living alone, sharing homes with non-romantic partners, building households that do not conform to historical templates, and generally reconsidering what domestic life can mean, objects that hold no assumptions about who you are feel genuinely valuable. They let you furnish your life on your own terms.

Final Thoughts

& Other Stories has quietly built one of the most thoughtfully considered home accessory ranges available at its price point. The pieces are not inexpensive, but neither are they beyond reach for anyone who has decided to invest in their living space. What you are paying for, beyond the materials and the craft, is a design philosophy that asks very little of you in terms of lifestyle performance and gives a great deal in terms of daily pleasure.

Whether you are looking for a gift that will suit almost anyone, searching for pieces to complete a room that has almost everything it needs, or beginning to think seriously about building a home environment that reflects who you actually are rather than who the market assumes you to be, the & Other Stories home range offers something worth exploring.

These are objects for living. Pick them up, use them, put them somewhere they can be seen. They will do the rest.