Inside Out: At Home in Porto with Carla Pinto

For the first time, we’ve captured co-owner Carla Pinto not just in her design element, but in her own element — at home, in Porto. As seen through the sensitive lens of Joana Cordeiro Ferreira, these moments at home with Carla mark a meaningful milestone in our journey: Carla’s first involvement in Something Good Studio’s homeware collection and, more specifically, the design of our latest range from the Young Designer Competition (YDC).

This is not just new territory for Something Good Studio — it’s a full circle moment, a return to something deeply personal for Carla. Interior design is a space she’s always loved. And while she has long been known for her work in fashion — including as co-founder of our Romaria Knitwear brand — this marks the first time she’s had the opportunity to co-develop products for the home. With an innate eye for interior styling and a tactile sensitivity to materials, Carla brings a uniquely European sensibility that blends beautifully with our South African craftsmanship. Her home, layered with light, texture and intention, reflects the same values we hold dear at Something Good Studio: slow artistry, enduring quality, with a touch of fun and a play of colours.

These small glimpses inside Carla’s home and life reveal a deeper turning point in our story as a textile design studio, reflecting both the theme of this year’s YDC — Inside Out — as well as our general ethos. While our roots remain primarily in South Africa — in its craft traditions, its collaborators, its communities — we have always been outward looking. With Carla now permanently based in Portugal, our partnership has become proudly cross-continental. She has not only introduced her own European elegance to Something Good Studio, but also widened our network of collaborators, most recently with Portugal based Vanessa Ford (Canadian born with roots in Jamaica), and the wildly popular Shero Cloak.

In three beautiful episodes, Carla shares insight into her family's life in Porto — a historic coastal city in northern Portugal. She reveals not only the organic and playful approach she has toward interior design, but also the underlying significance and histories embedded in the array of objects that make a house a home. From a record player inherited from her father-in-law to the blankets she helped create, each element is thoughtfully arranged — then undone and reimagined in tune with the natural rhythms of how her family live in and inhabit their space.

From Johannesburg to Porto — and now with our first physical store at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront — Something Good Studio is proof that distance is no barrier when values and vision align. Carla’s story, shared so intimately in these glimpses of her home, reminds us how the personal can shape the collective. Her approach to interior design — where stories are embedded in objects and meaning shifts through playful arrangement and rearrangement — mirrors how we’ve grown as a studio: organically yet intentionally, and always in response to life’s ebbs and flows. What began as a conversation at a design fair in 2018 has become a cross-continental studio grounded in care, creativity, and collaboration. Today, Carla’s presence is woven not just into our latest collection, but into the very fabric of who we are — and where we’re going next.