Christian Lacroix Maison has recently designed a furnishings collection for Roche Bobois, the international French furnishings store with locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and area, and Quebec City.Michel Gibert
If your home is screaming for a makeover, make your first call a fashion designer.
The rulers of the runway have shifted course and are now using their creative powers to transform ugly duckling decors into the beauty queens of their homeowner's dreams.
In Milan, Italy, at the 2016 edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, among the world's most influential interiors trade shows, fashion designers were as plentiful as furniture makers – and grabbing most of the attention.
Everyone, it seemed, had a new bespoke chair or a sleek silhouette of a light fixture to show off. The list was impressive: Armani, Bottega Veneta, Roberto Cavalli, Diesel, Etro, Fendi, Hermès. And it's not just high-end fashion houses who have crossed over.
Fast-fashion brands H&M and Zara have both recently gone into home wares, while Sweden's Cos has formed a partnership with Danish design firm Hay to make home accessories as minimalist as Cos's Nordic-inspired clothes. The lure is a combination of money and artistic ambition.
"Fashion designers see design as a new opportunity for them to grow their business and apply their creativity to a global market," says Judy Dobias, the Canadian-born managing director of Camron PR, the London-based design communications agency whose clients include the organizers of Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Clerkenwell Design Week and Design Miami/Basel, among others.
Worldwide, interiors have started to chase after fashion as a revenue maker. A 2015 Allied Market Research report predicts the luxury furniture market will reach $27-billion (U.S.) by 2020. By comparison, the personal luxury goods sector generates $264-billion in revenue, according to Luxury Daily.
Collaborating with home decor brands can help even established fashion houses increase profit.
As evidence of this, Armani/Casa, the home-focused arm of the Italian luxury company, "saw total business increase 22 per cent year-on-year," the paper reported.
"The transition from fashion to home decor is an easy one for most professionals, and interiors is a more lucrative opportunity as the market is wider," comments Susan Langdon, executive director of Toronto Fashion Incubator, a not-for-profit resource centre for fashion designers.
But there's another reason fashion designers are forging partnerships with interiors companies.
It's about brand building, observes Sacha Walckhoff, the creative director at Christian Lacroix Maison who recently designed a furnishings collection for Roche Bobois, the international French furnishings store with locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and area, and Quebec City.
"This first collaboration with Roche Bobois is launched at a time when we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of our Lacroix lifestyle collections. It is a wonderful opportunity for both brands to celebrate the French art de vivre," Mr. Walckhoff says.
That sensibility extends to deluxe details, such as rosewood combined with 18-karat gold-plated brass inserts, cut velvet and silk satin, all exquisite materials. Mr. Walckhoff says he designed the collection as a tribute to the French decorative arts of the 20th century.
"I had this mad idea to mix and match the different eras," he elaborates. "To give you an idea, the shapes are clean, inspired by the Sixties, but the luxurious materials are inspired by the Thirties and the lacquered wood printed panels are sometimes a bit like in the Fifties or otherwise like in the Seventies. All of this on the same piece."
Mr. Walckhoff also mixed in elements from Lacroix fashion shows past. Chairs, for instance, are shaped like haute couture atelier mannequins and the black and white striped satin is the same fabric used for the Cigale dress presented as part of the house's first haute couture collection in 1987.
"The Maison Lacroix collection is elegant and glamorous," Mr. Walckoff says. "It has been designed to share our French know-how with an international audience."
Fashion and home furnishings collaborations go way back. Versace launched a textiles collection in 1992 and is now making both indoor and outdoor furniture. Missoni Home dates to 1983, the same year Ralph Lauren Home opened its doors in the United States.
And well before any of them, French couturier Jeanne Lanvin had teamed up with French furniture maker and interior designer Armand-Albert Rateau in the 1920s. In the 1970s, Yves Saint Laurent collaborated with François-Xavier Lalanne to create a rhinoceros desk and bronzed sheep sculptures covered with hides to be displayed as garden furniture.
Lalanne told Saint Laurent at the time that "the supreme art is the art of living." The legendary fashion designer believed him.