The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Matter and Shape, the first design salon to take place during Paris Fashion Week, opened Friday in the Tuileries Gardens.
The trade fair brought together furniture and homeware propositions from fashion favourites like Rick Owens, Sacai, Charlotte Chesnais and Fendi’s Delfina Delettrez alongside manufacturers like De Sede and Flos.
Sacai, which shows its womenswear collection Monday, collaborated with cult Paris homeware brand Astier de Villatte on a line of ceramics using the Japanese technique of kintsugi, fusing together fragments of the house’s signature white-glazed black porcelain pottery with gold leaf. Rick Owens showed the latest versions of his macabre, sculptural cowhide ottomans; while Delettrez showed a collection of objets de vie including silver teabags and drinking glasses that integrate crystals to spiritually charge water.
More commercial design brands like Italian lighting giant Flos and French patio furniture specialist Tolix were also present, as well as niche creators like Italy’s OLDER Studio or Guild of Saint Luke (a firm that has recently outfitted a spate of buzzy restaurants in Paris and London with top-end custom furnishings).
ADVERTISEMENT
Matter and Shape was put on by trade show organiser WSN to complement its neighbouring Premiere Classe accessories show, amid mounting interest in designer homeware. In recent year’s Milan’s Salone del Mobile has grown into a major international event, with more retailers and luxury brands piling into the category.
In a sign of the industry’s swelling interest in the intersection of design and fashion, Jil Sander partnered with the fair to sponsor a series of talks, while Zara Home staged a café. Restaurant collective We are Ona put on a pop-up restaurant with chef Pierce Abernathy.
WSN created the event in partnership with Mathieu Pinet, a trade show executive who initially started Matter and Shape as a digital design platform, and journalist Dan Thawley as its curator. The Paris fair will initially be an annual event, but WSN is exploring taking the concept on the road with editions during other cities’ fashion weeks in the future, Pinet said.
The designer has always been an arch perfectionist, a quality that has been central to his success but which clashes with the demands on creative directors today, writes Imran Amed.
This week, Prada and Miu Miu reported strong sales as LVMH slowed and Kering retreated sharply. In fashion’s so-called “quiet luxury” moment, consumers may care less about whether products have logos and more about what those logos stand for.
The luxury goods maker is seeking pricing harmonisation across the globe, and adjusts prices in different markets to ensure that the company is”fair to all [its] clients everywhere,” CEO Leena Nair said.
Hermes saw Chinese buyers snap up its luxury products as the Kelly bag maker showed its resilience amid a broader slowdown in demand for the sector.