Everyone feels something when they arrive at Eastnor Castle. The scale, the setting, the sudden presence of a thousand patterns and details – it all registers immediately, even if it’s hard to put a finger on why.
For Campbell Carey, head cutter and creative director of Huntsman, the feeling had a name: cinematic. ‘Eastnor has real presence, but it isn’t austere or untouchable,’ he says. ‘There’s warmth and a sense of life. You arrive and immediately understand that it’s a place with stories in the walls.’
Carey first encountered Eastnor when he shot Huntsman’s autumn/winter 2024 campaign in the castle. That means his initial foray into Eastnor was through work, which, naturally, shaped his first impression.
‘You’re immediately reading the light, the scale of the rooms, the texture of the interiors, the way the landscape frames the building,’ he says. ‘You’re not just admiring it; you’re responding to it creatively.’
And Eastnor certainly has a lot he could respond to. The shoot moved through some of the castle’s most recognisable spaces – the Long Library, Gothic Drawing Room and State Dining Room – rooms with that unmistakably layered Eastnor look, yet also ones that still feel genuinely lived in. There are some epic outdoor shots, too, where the drama of the colossal front door and imposing courtyard introduced a different kind of depth – especially at golden hour.
‘When a location has that much identity, you don’t try to impose something over the top of it. You work with it,’ says Carey. ‘Eastnor has character and contrast: formality alongside comfort, richness alongside restraint. That gave us a brilliant canvas for a campaign.’
Carey joined Huntsman in 2014, inheriting not just a role, but over a century of craft heritage. Founded in 1849, the Savile Row tailor has spent generations preserving its traditions and refining its identity. It’s a question familiar to any institution with a strong sense of history: how to remain relevant without losing what matters.
‘I think the key is respect without reverence,’ says Carey. ‘At Huntsman, we’re custodians of a house style and a standard of craft, but we’re not trying to recreate the past. The aim is to preserve what matters – the cut, the integrity, the details – and allow everything else to evolve naturally around it. The best heritage spaces, and heritage brands, feel current because they’re still being used, still being shaped, still being lived in.’
It’s that lived-in quality that Eastnor does so well. Our collections have been shaped by the tastes of generations of tastemakers, and are still being added to today – accumulating layers of stories and history and character that simply can’t be replicated in newer spaces. And it’s this that attracts creatives to come to Eastnor – to respond to it in new and interesting ways, adding their own chapters to Eastnor’s ever-expanding story.
‘For creative people, Eastnor is incredibly energising because it pushes you to respond intuitively, and it rewards simplicity,’ Carey says. ‘The setting does so much, you just have to be attentive enough to let it speak.’