Last Month’s Parisian Design Fairs Made Us Feel Open-Hearted and Optimistic About the Future of Design

Paris has been host to a lot of action over the last few months: Fashion Week, the World Rugby Cup, and a certain creepy crawly who shall not be named among them. During the second and third weeks of October, however, a flurry of design people — our people — popped into town for a fair circuit punctuated by the inaugural Paris edition from Design Miami/ as well as Paris+ par Art Basel and two exciting new kids on the block: CONTRIBUTIONS and THEMA.
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This Graphic Designer–Turned–Cabinetmaker’s Dyed-Wood Furniture is, Well, To Die For

Paris-based designer Jonathan Cohen has been working in wood for only a couple of years. Initially trained as a graphic designer, his eye for flat compositions naturally transferred into the three-dimensional world of furniture, with his creations quickly catching the eye of top architects and designers and local galleries. “When you have knowledge of good proportion, shape, and balance, you can design a letter or furniture,” Cohen says. “For me, it’s almost the same.” What lends the designer's work a certain je ne sais quoi, however, is the unique dye treatment he uses, applied in various techniques to bring out the grain and texture of the wood — forming patterns reminiscent of those created by Memphis artist Nathalie du Pasquier. 
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Curved Walls — and Color — Are French Architect Pauline Borgia’s Secret to Designing a Small Space

At Pauline Borgia’s childhood home in Corsica, every room was a different color. Growing up in this polychromatic environment, she quickly understood the power of color to create associations and identity, and now applies hues in a highly considered way — to focus a sightline, play with proportion, or create a trompe l’oeil effect — in projects by her Paris-based studio, Atelier Steve.
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Ceramic Fireplaces and Leather Doors: Inside the Paris Atelier and Home of Valentine Schlegel

Once a forgotten name in French post-war decorative arts, the late ceramicist Valentine Schlegel came roaring back to prominence in the contemporary design and art world a few years back, becoming a muse to the likes of Simone Bodmer-Turner, Rogan Gregory, and others who appreciated her sculpted organic forms. And yet in spite of — or more likely because of — her resurgence, her longtime Paris apartment and studio was recently emptied out entirely and sold at auction. Adam Stech was lucky enough to photograph it before that happened.
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In a Philippe Starck Retrospective, The Designer’s Early Work Reads As Both Vintage and Prescient

Before Philippe Starck became a mega-famous household name, producing everything from countertop juicers to opulent hotel lobbies and Bond-villain yachts, the French designer conceived of Postmodern furniture that feels distinctly of its time yet continues to fascinate and compel us. Starck’s work from the late '70s and '80s is now getting its first retrospective at the Ketabi Bourdet gallery in Paris. In a way, it’s the next step in the ongoing re-evaluation of designs from that era and a continuation of the conversation the gallery opened up last year with an exhibition of the visionary Italian designer Paolo Pallucco.  
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Four New Design Hotels With Interiors to Melt Your Winter Blues

Anyone else get back from their end-of-year break and immediately start thinking about their next vacation? We’re only a week into 2023 and already mapping out trips for the rest of the year. To help plan yours, or simply provide a moment of mental escape from the January gloom, floods, and other bizarre happenings, here are some of our favorite new, gorgeously designed hotels that offer everything from a beach getaway in Oaxaca, to a romantic weekend in Paris, to total relaxation in the Azores.
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Frederic Pellenq’s New Furniture Collection Has Touches of Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Lloyd Wright

Frédéric Pellenq is not afraid to reference. Whether it’s artist Ellsworth Kelly, whose hand-drawn geometries informed a series of chairs; architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose famed Prairie style is translated into a side table; or decorator Jacques Grange, who is paid tribute through an armchair, Pellenq has nodded to the titans of 20th-century art and design for his first solo exhibition. 
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Rodolphe Parente’s Apertura Collection Includes a Lamp With Two Adam’s Apples

When Pierre Chareau, Gio Ponti and Carlo Scarpa are listed as a designer’s heroes, chances are their own work is going to be expressively shaped, functionally intriguing, and artistically quite lovely. And, happily, that’s exactly where Paris-based Rodolphe Parente’s new collection of furniture and lighting has landed in Apertura, a range of limited editions that complement the refined residential and retail interiors for which his studio is better known.
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fall travel design hotels

Three New Hotels With Dreamy Interiors to Inspire Your Fall Travel

Summer is practically over, once again. But before we resign ourselves to seasonal affective disorder and reach for the hot chocolate (or hot toddy, depending on your pref), let's remember that fall is a great time to travel. Places are quieter, lines are shorter, prices are cheaper, and the weather typically offers a balance between perfect to stroll and explore in, and gloomy enough to stay inside your hotel wearing a robe and slippers for the entire day, guilt-free. If you’re going to do the latter, it may as well be in a beautifully designed space, and our three picks of new (or newly rejuvenated) hotels for this season have us daydreaming of an autumnal escape.
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Theoreme Editions Collection 02 Sight Unseen

Theoreme Editions’ New Collection Features Mirror, Metallics, and a Hint of Mint

Named after a 1968 movie by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Paris-based brand Theoreme Editions describes its curatorial approach as embodying the same “fetish for form” and penchant for storytelling through art as Pasolini's radical film did. After presenting their debut collection of furniture, which we spotted during Milan Design Week in 2019 as well as at the 2020 Collectible Design Fair, founders David Giroire and Jérôme Bazzocchi invited 10 new French designers to collaborate with artisans across Europe. Intended as a continuity of the first, Collection 02 keeps a sculptural and poetic thread running through a range of numbered and limited editions.
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Sophie Dries shoe store

A Whimsical Parisian Shoe Store By One of France’s Biggest Up-and-Coming Talents

Sophie Dries's design for the Michel Vivien store is relatively simple, in that it centers around a 50-foot-long undulating walnut wood wall pierced with glass and wooden floating shelves. But it is the art and objects — abstract, totem-like sculptures, stools by Pierre Chapo used as pediments for displaying shoes, plush velvet seating, and lighting by Jacques Biny and Charlotte Perriand — and the way she artfully arranges them that make the space so interesting.
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Get Good Vibes Only From this Show of Grandma-Inspired Lamps and Balloon-Like Chairs

Sister-Sister, Léa Mestres's new show at the Paris gallery Scene Ouverte, is a highly photogenic pairing of two sides of the up-and-coming French designer's practice. One the one hand, there are her puffy, balloon-like chairs, benches, and tables. On the other hand, there are her colorful stucco lamps. "I see them as old ladies," she says. "They each have a names and personality. That's why I called the show 'sisters sisters' — it’s an old ladies' gang."
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