PARIS — When Aline Asmar d’Amman was working with Karl Lagerfeld on a couple of luxury suites for the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, the late designer introduced her to one of the French capital’s best-kept secrets: Féau Boiseries.
The showroom, hidden behind an unprepossessing door in a neighborhood known for its upscale food stores, houses a treasure trove of wood paneling dating back to the 16th century, including the exact doors that Lagerfeld knew he wanted to use as a reference for his hotel room concept.
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“I was mesmerized. I was so stunned that a place like that exists in Paris and it’s not the Louvre,” the Lebanese architect recalled. “When I’m here, I no longer feel time pass and you have to push me out the door.”
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Almost a decade later, she’s back at the 150-year-old space for the launch of her first eponymous furniture collection, which is on display among 300 historic objects, including an oversize bookcase once owned by the 19th-century couturier Jacques Doucet.
The line, available exclusively through the London-based furniture marketplace The Invisible Collection, condenses many elements of her design philosophy, with creations ranging from Art Deco-style lamps to a pink sofa set that looks so edible, pastry chef Pierre Hermé has made a special cake to celebrate its launch.
Asmar d’Amman, dressed in a neon pink denim Chanel jacket adorned with pink camellias, said she wanted the line to be a tribute to femininity.
Fashion plays a major role in her design process. Helmut Newton’s iconic snapshot of a model in a black Yves Saint Laurent trouser suit was on her mood board when she designed the Smoking line of luminaries, named after the French word for tuxedo.
“Here, you will find a reference to a pleated cummerbund,” she said, pointing to the ridged base of a lamp. “Everything is calculated down to the last millimeter. The ridges alternate between four millimeters and five millimeters in width, and maybe to the naked eye, there’s no difference. But in reality, it’s what makes grafted metal look like the pleats of a skirt.”
A 1995 runway image of Thierry Mugler’s Venus sheath gown with a pink satin shell-shaped crinoline, famously worn by Cardi B at the 2019 Grammy Awards, informed the Georgia conversation salon. The pink mohair set, named after artist Georgia O’Keeffe, consists of a circular day bed and two rotating armchairs with backrests shaped like braided petals.
Asmar d’Amman said the design was four years in the making and involved collaborating with master upholsterer Charles Jouffre on a structure that is as visually flawless as an haute couture gown.
“This spirit of fashion, this spirit of the couture gesture — a perfect drape, a perfect pleat, an elegance, a proportion that is specific to couture — obsesses me when I work on huge building sites, from macro to micro, and it was definitely a vocabulary I shared with Karl Lagerfeld,” she explained.
“I always say, nothing real gets done in life, nothing great, without obsession. You have to be completely mad,” she added with a laugh.
Following the renovation of the Crillon in Paris, and the redesign of the Jules Verne restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, her studio Culture in Architecture has been commissioned to design and decorate the Orient Express hotel at the historic Palazzo Donà Giovannelli in Venice, a six-year project.
“When I enter a place like that, the first thing I do is to start writing a story with fashion characters. I imagine how they would look walking through those rooms today,” she said. “In this place, you have to imagine the Marchesa Casati, but dressed in John Galliano,” she suggested, referring to the Italian aristocrat known for her eccentric style.
Born in Beirut in 1975, at the start of the Lebanese Civil War, Asmar d’Amman traces her relationship with fashion back to her childhood. Whenever there was a ceasefire, her mother wanted the whole family to wear their best clothes, even if only for a few hours.
“It’s like a shield. Clothes transport you right away. You become a character and it’s really a protection, so I use that a lot in my everyday life. People ask me why I visit building sites in heels, but it’s not for others, it’s for me. I feel much more powerful when my feminine nature is on full display,” she explained.
Though she’s now based in Paris, her outlook was shaped by those early impressions. “You learn so many things: first of all, to enjoy the instant and to celebrate life when it’s possible. And also, probably from my mother, that beauty is also about dignity and beauty saves you every day,” Asmar d’Amman said.
“For me, it’s a means of resistance. It’s not about luxury only and it’s not about fancy things. It’s about celebrating life and surrounding yourself with things that echo with symbol and meaning and depth,” she added.
A case in point: the Crystal Petal floral wallpaper she has designed for de Gournay, which combines handpainted blooms with jagged crystal pieces embroidered on the surface. “This is a story about upcycling, it’s a story about the ultimate luxury of the offerings of Earth,” she said.
Together with the historical marble makers of Laboratorio Morseletto in Italy, she is also using recovered materials like the pink onyx and scarred Vincenza stone that make up her Stone Cloud coffee tables. Meanwhile, slabs of marble, salvaged from luxury stores, are repurposed in a series of plinths.
“It took millions of years for these geological strata to form and to give these colors of the marbles, the veins, the tints. I mean, it’s something mystical, almost,” she marveled.
“When you grow in Lebanon, in a country of war, and everything is demolished and what remains is just what you can live with, you realize the importance of these remains. They speak about beauty, they don’t speak only about the broken, so I think there’s a very interesting way of uplifting all that,” she said.
Unveiled as part of Paris Design Week, a series of events staged in parallel with the Maison & Objet trade show, her collection can be viewed by appointment until Oct. 5. A second exhibition will be held at The Invisible Collection’s first showroom in New York City from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.
Isabelle Dubern-Mallevays, cofounder of The Invisible Collection, said Chanel will partner on the New York showroom through its Métiers d’Art houses, including embroiderer Lesage, gold- and silversmith Goossens, and for the first time, feather and flower expert Lemarié.
“The home sector has exploded since COVID-19,” she said. “Even the world of fashion absolutely wants to have a hand in design.” Lagerfeld would no doubt approve.