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

There is something quietly revolutionary about the way & Other Stories approaches home accessories. The Swedish-born brand, part of the H&M Group family, has long been celebrated for its ability to translate runway sensibility into wearable, everyday pieces. But in recent years, its home accessory collection has grown into something far more expansive — a carefully curated universe of objects that blur the line between personal adornment and interior design, and that resist the outdated notion that home décor needs to speak a gendered language.

If you have found yourself wandering through the & Other Stories website, lingering over a candle or a ceramic cup and wondering whether it belongs in your wardrobe or on your shelf, you are not alone. That feeling of blurred categories is entirely intentional. The brand has built its identity around the idea that style is a continuous thread running through every aspect of a person’s life, from the jacket they wear on the street to the objects they arrange on their windowsill at home.

This post takes a deep look at & Other Stories unisex home accessories — what makes them distinctive, how to use them in your space, why the unisex approach matters, and how to make the most of the collection whether you are furnishing a first apartment, refreshing a long-lived-in home, or simply looking for a thoughtful gift that works for anyone.

What Does Unisex Mean in the Context of Home Accessories?

The word “unisex” carries obvious resonance in fashion, where it typically signals clothing designed without gender-specific cuts, silhouettes, or assumptions. But what does it mean when applied to home accessories?

In the context of & Other Stories, unisex home accessories are pieces designed without a presumed audience. They are not coded pink or blue, soft or hard, delicate or utilitarian along gender lines. Instead, they operate through a different vocabulary entirely — one rooted in material quality, aesthetic restraint, and versatility. A linen cushion cover does not assume who will sleep beneath it. A sculptural resin tray does not presuppose the gender of whoever sets their keys and rings on it at the end of the day. A solid glass carafe asks nothing about the person pouring the water.

This approach matters because it reflects a broader shift in how people relate to their living spaces. Home has become a deeply personal expression of identity in ways that previous generations might not have anticipated. The rise of remote work, the renewed attention to domestic life, and the growing cultural conversation about gender fluidity have all converged to make the home a space where people want to see themselves — not a demographic, not a target market, but themselves.

& Other Stories meets that desire with objects that are quietly confident, aesthetically consistent, and open enough to take on the character of whoever brings them home.

The Aesthetic Language of & Other Stories Home

Before diving into specific categories and pieces, it helps to understand the visual and material DNA of the & Other Stories home collection, because it is remarkably coherent.

The brand tends toward a palette that sits between warmth and neutrality — creams, warm whites, terracottas, dusty pinks that lean toward blush or mauve, deep forest greens, and occasional hits of deep plum or near-black. These are not colors that announce themselves loudly. They are colors that settle into a room and make other objects look better.

Texturally, the brand favors materials that reward close attention: unglazed ceramics with visible fingerprint impressions and kiln marks, hand-poured candles where the wax surface retains the slight imperfection of the pour, linen and cotton textiles that soften beautifully with washing, and glass objects with a weight and clarity that signal genuine craft. There is an emphasis on the handmade, or at least the hand-adjacent — even machine-produced items tend to have a quality of finish that suggests care rather than volume production.

The overall effect is of a home that has been assembled thoughtfully over time, where each object has been chosen rather than accumulated. This is a sensibility that appeals broadly because it is essentially about taste and attention rather than any particular lifestyle or identity marker.

Candles and Fragrance: Setting the Atmosphere

One of the most consistently popular categories in the & Other Stories home collection is candles and fragrance. And for good reason — scent is perhaps the most unisex of all sensory experiences. While fragrance marketing has historically been deeply gendered, the actual experience of smell operates outside those categories. A room that smells of cedarwood and bergamot, or smoke and sandalwood, or green fig and warm wax, does not belong to a man or a woman. It belongs to the moment.

& Other Stories candles tend to feature scent profiles that echo the brand’s broader fragrance philosophy — complex, slightly unexpected, often with a woody or earthy base note that grounds them. These are not the sugary or florally aggressive candles that dominate the mass market. They are quieter and more interesting, designed to create atmosphere without dominating it.

Beyond the scent itself, the vessels matter. & Other Stories candle vessels are typically ceramic or glass, with a considered weight and proportion that makes them worth keeping once the wax is gone. A good candle vessel is essentially a small sculpture, and the brand understands this. Many people repurpose them as pencil holders, small vases, or jewelry dishes — a second life that speaks to the quality of the original design.

For gifting, a candle from & Other Stories is one of those reliably thoughtful choices that works across gender, age group, and taste because it signals care without requiring deep knowledge of the recipient’s preferences.

Ceramics and Tableware: The Everyday as Art

There is a long tradition, particularly in Scandinavian and Japanese design culture, of treating everyday objects — cups, bowls, plates, carafes — as worthy of the same aesthetic attention as art objects. & Other Stories has absorbed this tradition and translated it into a contemporary idiom.

The ceramic pieces in the home collection tend to feature earthy glazes in tones of sage, cream, warm brown, or deep blue, often with a slightly uneven surface that makes clear each piece has been made rather than simply manufactured. Even pieces that are produced at scale carry this quality because the design intent preserves the marks of making rather than erasing them.

A well-chosen ceramic mug or bowl from & Other Stories functions in a home the same way a good pair of shoes functions in a wardrobe — it elevates everything around it through its own quiet confidence. Setting a table with pieces that have been individually considered, even if they do not match perfectly, creates a visual richness that matching sets rarely achieve.

For people furnishing a home with a strong preference for minimalism, these pieces work beautifully because their interest comes from surface and material rather than from ornament. For people who prefer a more layered, maximalist approach, they hold their own amid other objects without competing. This adaptability is a genuine design achievement.

The tableware category also includes glassware — tumblers, wine glasses, carafes — often in clear or lightly tinted glass with a weight and balance that feels substantial without being heavy. Drinking from a beautiful glass is a small daily pleasure, and the & Other Stories approach to glassware understands this completely.

Textiles: Where Comfort Meets Considered Design

Cushion covers, throws, and small textile pieces form another important strand of the & Other Stories home offering. As with the ceramics, the emphasis here is on natural materials — linen, cotton, occasionally wool — in textures that feel good against skin and improve with use.

The color palette for textiles tends to echo the wider collection: warm neutrals, muted earth tones, the occasional deep jewel color used as an accent. These are pieces designed to integrate rather than dominate, to add textural interest to a sofa or bed without requiring a complete restyling of the room.

What is particularly relevant from a unisex perspective is that textiles are often the category where home décor becomes most rigidly gendered in mainstream retail. Florals and soft pinks are directed at women; geometric patterns and dark colors at men. & Other Stories sidesteps this entirely by choosing patterns and textures that are abstract, nature-inspired, or graphic in ways that carry no gender charge — a linen cushion with an embroidered outline of a leaf, a throw in a warm oatmeal color with a ribbed texture, a small cotton pouch with a simple block-printed motif.

These are pieces that work in any home because they have been designed by and for people who simply care about how things look and feel, rather than how they are supposed to look and feel according to a demographic brief.

Small Objects and Decorative Accessories

Perhaps the most purely pleasurable category in any home collection is the small object — the decorative piece that serves no practical function except to be beautiful, or interesting, or to mark the personality of the space it inhabits.

& Other Stories has a genuine talent for this category. The brand produces small sculptural objects in ceramic, resin, and glass that occupy the borderline between functional and purely ornamental — a smooth river-stone-shaped object in pale ceramic that might be a paperweight or simply a thing to hold, a small glass bottle in an amber tone that might have been repurposed from a perfume but now holds a single dried flower, a resin-cast object in a color that catches the light differently at different times of day.

These pieces work best when grouped with intention — a small arrangement on a shelf or windowsill that creates a visual conversation between objects of different heights, materials, and textures. Interior stylists call this “vignetting,” and it is the technique most responsible for making home interiors feel curated rather than random.

For the & Other Stories aesthetic, the sweet spot tends to be three to five objects that share a loose color palette but differ in material and scale — a ceramic piece, a glass piece, a plant or dried botanical, and perhaps a small candle. The result is a composition that feels lived-in and personal rather than arranged for a showroom.

Gifting: Why & Other Stories Home Accessories Work for Everyone

One of the practical advantages of the & Other Stories home collection is its suitability as a gift across a wide range of recipients. The unisex quality of the pieces, combined with their relatively accessible price points and the brand’s reputation for quality, makes them a go-to choice for anyone who wants to give something thoughtful without navigating the complicated terrain of personal taste.

A beautifully packaged candle in an interesting scent. A small ceramic dish in a warm terracotta glaze. A set of linen napkins in a color that works with almost any table setting. These are gifts that communicate “I thought about this” without requiring the gifter to have detailed knowledge of the recipient’s home or preferences.

The unisex positioning matters here particularly because so many home accessory gifts are silently gendered in ways that can feel presumptuous — giving a woman a florally scented candle in a pink vessel, or giving a man something in matte black with a self-consciously industrial aesthetic. The & Other Stories approach simply bypasses this entirely, offering objects that are beautiful on their own terms without encoding assumptions about who should receive them.

Styling & Other Stories Home Accessories in Your Space

If you are bringing & Other Stories home accessories into your space for the first time, a few principles make the process both easier and more enjoyable.

Start with one strong piece rather than buying a full set. A single beautiful ceramic vase, placed where you will see it every day, teaches you more about what else you want in your space than any amount of advance planning. Notice what other objects it seems to want beside it, and let the arrangement develop organically over time.

Mix the new with the old. The & Other Stories aesthetic is warm and human precisely because it incorporates the marks of time and use. A new piece placed alongside something vintage or found — a smooth stone from a beach, a glass bottle from a flea market, a few dried stems from a summer garden — will look better than the same piece surrounded only by other new things.

Respect the negative space. The impulse when adding new objects to a home is often to fill the space more fully, but the & Other Stories sensibility is actually about restraint — a few carefully chosen things with breathing room around them, rather than a shelf crowded with objects of equal visual weight.

Finally, let the collection evolve with you. The best domestic interiors are never finished; they are always in progress, accumulating meaning and character as the person who lives in them changes and grows. Adding a piece from & Other Stories to your home is not a commitment to a fixed aesthetic. It is the beginning of a conversation that continues every time you pick up that mug, light that candle, or catch the light shifting across that ceramic glaze at the end of a long afternoon.

A Note on Sustainability

No discussion of contemporary home accessories is complete without acknowledging the question of sustainability, and & Other Stories has taken meaningful steps in this direction. The brand has increased its use of natural, biodegradable, and recycled materials across its collections, and its emphasis on quality over quantity — pieces designed to last and age well rather than to be replaced seasonally — aligns with a more considered approach to consumption.

Unisex design also has an implicit sustainability argument: objects that are not coded to a specific gender identity or demographic have a longer useful life because they do not go out of style with the same speed as trend-driven pieces. A beautiful ceramic bowl in an earthy neutral glaze will be as desirable in ten years as it is today, not because it is timeless in a generic sense but because its appeal is rooted in material quality and honest design rather than in trend.

Buying fewer, better things is always a more sustainable approach to home decoration, and the & Other Stories home collection — with its emphasis on craft, natural materials, and aesthetic longevity — makes that approach genuinely pleasurable rather than merely virtuous.

Final Thoughts

The & Other Stories home accessory collection is, at its best, a meditation on what it means to live well — to pay attention to the objects that share your daily life, to choose things for their beauty and quality rather than their brand identity or demographic signal, and to build a home that reflects who you actually are rather than who some marketing brief imagines you to be.

The unisex character of these pieces is not a marketing label or a trend response. It is an expression of a deeper design philosophy: that beautiful things belong to everyone, that the home is a personal space in the fullest sense of the word, and that the objects we live with every day deserve to be chosen with the same care and curiosity we bring to any other creative decision in our lives.

Whether you are discovering the collection for the first time or returning to it season after season, that philosophy is what gives & Other Stories home accessories their particular staying power — and their particular pleasure.