Our highlights from Paris Design Week 2025

Paris Design Week rumbles on, with design professionals and aesthetically-minded members of the public perusing various locations to discover the latest collections in decor and interiors.

The event, born from the trade-focused Maison&Objet, showcases more than 150 brands who, via affiliated occasions like Paris Déco Off and Maison&Objet in the City, welcome attendees into their showrooms. The doors of workshops and ateliers are thrown open and Paris' sequestered design spaces unlocked, extending collections and archives usually reserved for industry insiders, to the public.

Attendees can take various routes around Paris to discover these collections, exploring the spots that make up its design ecosystem. Head of Interiors, Olly Mason, spent a couple of days traversing the capital’s arrondissements, dipping in and out of studios and getting the rundown on exhibiting brands.

We catch up with Olly for her highlights, reflections and meditations on Paris Design Week…

Melodic tableware at Hermès

Hermès presented En Contrepoint, a tableware collection, at the Conservatoire National Des Artes et Métiers, a former abbey in Paris’ third arrondissement. The 33 porcelain pieces are lined with friezes in 30 shades, from pinks and violets to blues, greens and oranges. Motifs are vibrant and geometric, hand-drawn and painted by artist Nigel Peake.

‘The collection was really beautiful,’ says Olly. ‘The word “contrepoint” actually refers to a style of musical composition that uses multiple melodies, and the whole collection related to this.’ En Contrepoint is all about refrain and tempo – this is transposed onto the designs via metrical patterns and rhythmic shapes; the repetition of these shapes becomes hypnotic, arranged into different permutations, as music is on a score.

Acidic upholstery at Sahco

Sahco presented its collection in the whitewashed surrounds of the Galerie Dumonteil. Room Service, an installation predicated around the theme of ‘icons of Modernism’, was staged by American designer Rafael de Cárdenas, who took Modernist motifs and imbued them with Sahco language.

Set among vintage and classic furniture and objet d’art, Sahco’s pieces also felt, in some ways, archaic and artisanal. In making them, however, traditional techniques were combined with high tech.

References came thick and fast: the colours recalled Franz West, the Austrian artist known for his unconventional objects, and designer Ulf Moritz, who shaped Sahco in the 1980s. A fringed sheer made with fil-coupé alluded to the glamour of Marilyn Monroe, and a snakeskin motif was unexpectedly rendered in heavy jacquard. ‘The first thing that struck me was the colours,’ says Olly. ‘But then you saw that the designs stood up to this.’

Looking back at Liberty

Next on Olly’s agenda was the Rue de Seine to preview Liberty’s 150th anniversary collection, The House of Liberty. ‘This was a deep dive into Liberty’s archival designs, which the brand had taken abstracts from and reworked, some more literally than others,’ she says.

The collection, which consisted of interior fabric and wallpaper, drew on key moments from Liberty’s past, with the intention of bookending the last 150 years to make way for a new era. Dusty, leather-bound books containing charcoal hand-drawings of original designs left audiences in little doubt about the scope of Liberty’s 60,000-strong archive.

In The House of Liberty, the stories of these fabrics were told and celebrated, reimagining Victorian paisleys, bohemian botanicals and 1970s florals. Palm Parade, for example, discovered as a fabric fragment in an 1880s pattern book, references an artwork originally made using woodblock printing. With every nod and reference, the collection sought to revive and update the craftsmanship at the heart of Liberty.

Modular minimalism at Liaigre

Interior architect Liaigre reissued the Bloc collection at its Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré flagship with a new edition of the Bloc Library, a collaboration between architects Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost and Dominique Perrault. The bookshelf – which builds on a design created in 1995 for the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, reimagining this at a domestic scale – is all about conservative minimalism and clean lines. It’s extensively adaptable, being fully modular, with almost limitless customisation options.

A special setting at The Invisible Collection

The Invisible Collection’s presentation took place at the enchanting Féau Boiseries workshop, which houses stacks upon stacks of antique wood panels, at its 150th anniversary. Stepping inside the appointment-only space was another standout for Olly: ‘You go through this unassuming door on a Parisian street and it’s like a warren – you head through room after room filled with wooden panels through different eras and styles.’

The Invisible Collection partnered with Mobilier national, the institution for French decorative arts, to present their latest furniture acquisitions in this idiosyncratic setting. These included a collection of Fauvist rugs by BENI, Laura Demichelis’ Rhino Table, Sophie Dries’ Nogye Table, and Alice Gavalet’s Guéridon.

Olly was particularly drawn to Elliott Barnes’ latest creation, White Endless Summer II, a limited edition bench in white Synderme, a material made from natural leather fibres mixed with paper and latex – notable for the fact that it uses vegetable leather to structure as opposed to just cover. Placing this state-of-the-art material in such rich, textural surroundings only enhanced its impact.

Old meets new at Nordic Knots

Nordic Knots' debut installation, The Grand, celebrated the intersection of contemporary design and ancient artistry. The venue for the presentation, therefore, could not have been more perfect, says Olly: ‘Galerie Chenel is known for housing these beautiful, ancient sculptures, and I loved the way that Nordic Knots mixed its pieces amongst them.’

The Scandinavian textile company exhibited its most covetable rugs and curtains draped on and around Galerie Chenel’s Roman artworks. The brand’s broad palette and rich textures were on full show, with plush rugs and all-wool curtains rendered in burnt reds, soft lilacs and sunshine yellows popping against mottled marble and centuries-old stone.

Functional ornaments at Christofle

The French silverware stalwart, which has been going since 1830, launched its Perspectives collection by Mathias Kiss. The French artist took the motif of moulding and dissected and reconstructed it to create candleholders, candelabras and a vase.

Because of the nature of moulding, the objects are tightly structured, while managing to feel slightly surreal. Kiss imagines a new functionality for ornamentation, using classical forms to create modern objects.

‘The motif was repeated with different angles and dimensions to create a collection that feels really architectural and contemporary,’ says Olly. ‘And, because of the way they play on a continuous line, each piece can be sat within other pieces to create your own composition.’

Contrasting fabrics at Dedar

Contemporary fabric and wallcovering specialist Dedar brought its 2025 collection to Paris Design Week: a lively amalgamation of contrasts, juxtaposing the classical and contemporary, as well as figurative, abstract and narrative elements. Oriental concepts sometimes crept in, with motifs of mountains, waterfalls, clouds, skies, butterflies and branches. Embroidery was combined with other, usual techniques, sometimes occasioning a clash of materials. Streaks and special dyes created a fusion of saturated, pale and mélange tones, and textures also ebbed and flowed: the Plain Classics, for example, are characterised by a woollen side and a silky side.

Evolution at Rubelli

Rubelli presented a textile collection developed under the creative direction of Formafantasma, Teorema. The collection, the brand has said, aims to better meet the demands of high-end markets, making use of high-performance fabrics such as wool, and angles to disrupt the perception of Rubelli as exclusively employing silks and other luxury textiles. This was a mission statement about the preservation of identity alongside the diversification of offering. Thus, Teorema can reasonably be described as innovative for Rubelli.

Colours were largely neutral, accompanied by some more extroverted shades. Patterns moved away from the botanical – ‘the most archetypal decorative apparatus of the fabric’ – to the abstract and geometric, in a way which echoed the theme of evolution.