Paris-based designer India Mahdavi is best known for her way with colour: from Ladurée’s boutiques in various shades of acid and deep greens to the all-pink Gallery restaurant at Sketch (said to be the most Instagrammed interior in London, it helped create the trend for millennial pink), Mahdavi has a gift for eye-popping palettes. Now, a new monograph, released during Milan Design Week, explores her vibrant canon.
India Mahdavi: the monograph
The monograph is filled with project photographs, such as this interior of Ladurée Beverly Hills, 2017 (top, courtesy India Mahdavi) as well as preparatory work, such as these sketches for the project
It’s 20 years since Mahdavi founded her studio, so this long-overdue publication is packed with an entire career’s worth of creations. And we’re lucky the interior design book has finally been published: it seems only the recent enforced lockdown allowed the designer the time to complete it.
Mahdavi, who trained at Paris’ Beaux-Arts and worked for Christian Liaigre before setting up her own studio after the birth of her son, has barely stopped for two decades, as this retrospective makes clear.
There have been hotel designs in Mexico and Monte-Carlo, private cinemas and residences, and restaurants in New York and Paris. She’s also opened three spaces of her own – a showroom, a boutique and a gallery – near her office on Rue Las Cases, from where she has launched designs including elegant blown-glass lamps, Mickey-shaped rattan masks, and her iconic ‘Bishop’ stools, the last now part of the collection of Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris.
‘If there is a common denominator to all my projects, it is the necessity of creating a sense of joy, a joie de vivre that I like to convey by using the primary colours of my emotions’
India Mahdavi
Making colours sing is only part of Mahdavi’s approach: ‘I have always practised interior design at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as scenography, film, decor, furniture, and product design, exploring as many opportunities that were given to me to design, decorate, remodel, or reveal a space, creating new experiences, embellishing life,’ she writes in the book’s introduction.
Top, Mahdavi’s interior for Gallery restaurant at Sketch in London, 2014 (courtesy India Mahdavi) and, above, her moodboard
‘But if there is a common denominator to all my projects, it is the necessity of creating a sense of joy, a joie de vivre that I like to convey by using the primary colours of my emotions to listen, to understand, to feel, to respond to an environment,’ she continues.
It’s this joie de vivre that makes her output so special. And the source for this vision and passion for all things colourful might be found in Madhavi’s countries of origin, Iran and Egypt, as well as her peripatetic childhood, which saw her move to the US, Germany and France. Certainly, the boldness of light and the pastel colours of the Mediterranean, where she lived as a child, seep through her work (coincidentally, many of her projects are based in the region).
Among Mahdavi’s takes on her ‘Bishop’ stool.
As well as a detailed interview by Javier F Contreras, dean of the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD in Geneva, the monograph includes a booklet of Mahdavi’s photographs, capturing details, patterns, colours and more from her travels around the world.
Art-directed by Studio Achermann, the volume also comes with a bespoke patterned slipcase. Its cover features the designer’s profile and dots in a variety of shades, including periwinkle blue. Perhaps the new colour of the decade? Mahdavi will know.
Top, interior of Germain bistro in Paris, 2009 (courtesy India Mahdavi), and, above, Mahdavi’s sketches and chair design
INFORMATION
India Mahdavi, Chronicle Books, $65, £50, €58
-
Formafantasma’s biodiversity-boosting installation in a Perrier Jouët vineyard is cross-pollination at its bestFormafantasma and Perrier Jouët unveil the first project in their ‘Cohabitare’ initiative, ‘not only a work of art but also a contribution to the ecosystem’
-
Gingerbread City: architects sculpt London out of the season's favourite treatUntil December 29 in Chelsea, see London brought to life in a seasonal-appropriate medium by leading architects and designers
-
New Revox B77 MK III reel-to-reel tape recorder, and more cassette tape-based trickeryThe new Revox B77 MK III might be the ultimate analogue flex. In response, we’ve explored the outer reaches of cassette tape design
-
Interior design books championing shelf loveWelcome to the Wallpaper* guide of the best interior design books published in 2024 and beyond – a collection of riveting visual tomes to feed creative innovation, inspiration and imagination
-
Sketch is 20: a design history of London’s ultimate entertaining destinationA visual history of Sketch: from the world-famous pod loos to India Mahdavi’s Gallery, we chart the evolution of the London restaurant’s inspiring collaborations and colourful makeovers
-
MDF Italia and Jacob Cohën rethink the ‘Neil’ seat in denimMDF Italia has collaborated with Jacob Cohën on a new denim edition of the ‘Neil’ chair, making its debut at Salone del Mobile 2022
-
Dressing rooms with a difference at Milan’s Teatro degli ArcimboldiHere’s your backstage pass to Teatro degli Arcimboldi. Wallpaper* talks to Milanese architect Giulia Pellegrino, who curated ‘Vietato L’Ingresso’, a project inviting 17 local practices to redesign dressing rooms in the legendary theatre
-
Milanese apartment installation plays with colour and reflectionJosephine Akvama Hoffmeyer and Elisa Ossino present I'll Be Your Mirror, an immersive installation staged throughout a Milanese apartment, featuring contemporary frescoes, classic Scandinavian furniture and mirrored surfaces
-
Indian kitchen utensils revisited with a contemporary aestheticDesigners Nikita Bhate and Pascal Hien present SĀR, a new brand of sculptural everyday objects inspired by Indian rituals and cooking traditions
-
Aldo Rossi’s work and legacy celebratedWhile Molteni & C celebrates the furniture design of Aldo Rossi, MAXXI Museum pays tribute to the postmodernist architect through a series of sketches, photographs and models, on show in Rome until 17 October 2021
-
DeMuro Das launches new Uncommon Thread collectionThe New Delhi studio presents a collection of furnishings inspired by Indian modernist architecture, Le Corbusier's Chandigarh and local craft
