• 07/09/2022
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Christian Dior's medallion chair revisited by 17 designers<

(Milan) The favorite medallion chair of Christian Dior was entitled prominently in his first shop founded in 1947 in Paris: 74 years later, seventeen designers revisited this iconic object to bring it up to date.

Publié le 6 sept. 2021Brigitte HAGEMANN Agence France-Presse

Lined with cannage and Jouy canvas, this Louis XVI style chair also adorned, in black and gold or pink and gray, the boxes of the first perfumes of the Haute Couture House.

It is in these chairs that Christian Dior, a great designer and founder of the company who died in 1957 at the age of 52, installed his guests in a setting that he qualified in his memories as "sober, simple, especially ifclassic and Parisian ".

Created by the Louis Delanois carpenter in 1769, this chair in the oval file in the form of a medallion, which crossed the centuries without incident, was reviewed by designers at the request of Dior on the occasion of the Furniture Salon which wasOpen Sunday in Milan.

« La chaise médaillon Louis XVI du 18e siècle, c’est pour moi l’apothéose du mobilier français, les ébénistes en ont fait une chaise iconique, tamponnée avec un vernis Martin qui était une révolution à l’époque », a expliqué à l’AFP l’un d’entre eux, Pierre Yovanovitch.

La chaise médaillon de Christian Dior revisitée par 17 designers

"It is simple, it is comfortable, it has become very popular, and thanks to its curves it has been recognized immediate," continues this French interior designer.

Hence the enthusiasm of many designers to reinvent this chair which has become an emblem of the Dior house, like Philippe Starck who created an ultramodern version twenty years ago for the Italian brand Kartell, baptized Louis Ghost, entirelyin transparent plastic.International success was immediate.

"Symbol of French elegance"

For the occasion, Pierre Yovanovitch imagined the somewhat playful duo "Monsieur and Madame Dior", two medallion chairs in iron with clean lines, in yellow and light brown, dressed in the oblique canvas invented in 1967 by Marc Bohan, "awink both contemporary and rebellious ”.

"The chair is the most difficult design object to create, because it must be singular, comfortable and recognizable," says this former fashion designer of the Pierre Cardin house.

"The medallion chair symbolizes a certain classic France, a French elegance, it amused me" to create a "tribe" of five pieces by retapping them with woolen crochet patterns in the bright colors, commented to the'AFP the architect and designer India Mahdavi.

These chairs, exhibited like the others at the Palazzo Citterio in Milan, are "hybrid products, mixing the tradition of the Dior house and my vision of the patterns that I develop for my own collection", explains this French designer of Irano-Egyptian origin.

"I always mix floral and geometric patterns and very strong colors with black and white to find a certain luminosity, I am in permanent quest for light," she added.

Asked about the link between haute couture and interior architecture, she estimated that "on one side we dress bodies, on the other side of the spaces".