On January 20, the winter edition of Maison&Objet, the fair dedicated to all sectors of the furniture industry, from furniture to accessories, closed in Paris with a proposal divided into 15 sections. Despite the sub-zero temperatures of the opening days, the event recorded significant figures: 69,086 (55 percent buyers) unique visitors, a figure very slightly down from January 2024, from 149 nations, with the foreign share weighing in at 44 percent. 2,377 brands participated (more than half international), including 594 new exhibitors.
The event places great emphasis on the promotion of design culture at all levels: meetings, seminars for retailers, trend spaces to explore the theme of the edition, Sur/Reality!. And, as every year, a special space dedicated to the designer of the year – for January 2025, the guest speaker was the British designer Faye Toogood. Her installation, WOMANIFESTO!, was a journey into her creative universe, where industrial pieces and others in limited production were arranged in a dreamlike and – truly – surreal setting.
Faye Toogood’s profile is distinctive: a degree in art history, then a long stint on the editorial staff of The World of Interiors magazine. “At some point I wanted to do concrete things, in three dimensions, not just work on paper,” she explained at a conference. “I started practically from my kitchen at home, collaborating with designers and spaces like Dover Street Market (the multi-brand store in London created by Japanese house Comme des Garçons, ed.) to create installations. Then, at the suggestion of Tom Dixon, I started doing more permanent things. And I also started a clothing line with my sister. It’s really the sense of intimacy you get when you wear a dress that I try to transfer to the furniture I design”.
That includes the Poly Roly chair, now in the Driade catalog (“It’s more famous than me,” she quips), as well as collaborations with cc-tapis, Poltrona Frau, Calico Wallpaper, Tacchini, and Maison Matisse.
“In this installation I wanted to express my creative flow, what is happening in my studio today,” she says. “It is divided into four environments, four ‘rooms’ in my head that celebrate drawing, sculpture, landscape, and materials – the pillars of my research today and for the future. I thought of it as a dream, also to connect with the theme of surrealism.”
“My world has always been at the intersection of art, fashion and design – I think it’s because I don’t have a specific training as a designer. But now I’m starting to think it’s also because I’m a woman,” she continues. “Because of this multidisciplinarity, I have always seen myself as a ‘tinkerer’, an outsider. I make little maquettes, nothing is designed on a computer. But now the culture in general is very open to things like that. I like to connect with the world through the things I make. I think people feel that. Maybe it’s the discipline of art that gives that element to my design.”
From there, the conversation shifts to limited edition pieces, an area of great growth: “‘Limited’ to me means the freedom to take creativity to the extreme.” And for the future? “I have been focusing on sustainability for some time now, trying to work with suppliers who are geographically close to me. I am also very interested in the world of children, because they are the future. I would like to design a playground, for example. That would be interesting.”
