Lucy Irby founded her eponymous London-based public relations agency in 2019 after working at the fashion wholesale and PR agency Rainbowwave. It was a move driven by the hunch that she could bring a fresh, dynamic approach to communications in the interior design industry; and when she and fellow PR pro Lucy Rubinstein met, they realized they shared a holistic, cross-disciplinary approach to brand-building. Rubinstein joined Irby in 2020, and they are now preparing to relaunch as Irby & Rubinstein.

Together they have built a dedicated team of 10, and a client list that includes interior design heavyweights such as Toogood, Bryan O’Sullivan Studio, Beata Heuman, Tatjana von Stein, Rose Uniacke, MG&Co and Buchanan Studio, alongside the iconic brands Ginori 1735 and Anglepoise.  The pair sat down with me to talk about the power of PR to create meaningful connections in an increasingly fractured media landscape.

Emma Moore: PR was once a link between brands and the press, but now it seems to be more. How do you see your role?

Lucy Rubinstein: We’re a partner to our clients, responsible for the presentation of their brand. We might get them working with a certain writer to rework their website’s “about us” section, because it’s not quite serving their vision and mission. Or it might be that existing visuals won’t get them the attention they deserve so we reshoot campaigns, or connect them with videographers and photographers. We really try to understand a client’s objective and target audience, so the stories we are placing are strategic.

Lucy Irby: We are building towards positive perception in the press, but it’s the brand’s visibility more broadly too. It’s about creating ambassadors, bringing them into the brand community via events, or putting the product in their hands so that they speak about it to their peers and friends. One of our objectives for Nordic Knots, for example, is to make sure that their rugs are in many beautiful homes in the UK, and then that word really travels.