Paris Design Week, September 2026
A week walking Paris, from gallery to showroom : what this edition told us about material, light and the threshold.
The instant, made material
Discovering the universe of Giopato & Coombes : designers for whom nature and the experience of a single instant take physical form. Their bestselling Bolle recalls the soap bubbles children watch drifting through the air. The Bruma collection gives visual form to Venetian fog lying on the water.
Our favourite is the pendant from the new Norki collection : stacked Murano glass modules that turn sea-green under a soft, diffuse light.
The fabric before the piece
Boketto is the kind of gallery that catches the eye at once, and holds you for hours with its passion for curation. Over a conversation about our respective ways of sourcing, Hristo, the gallery's Managing Partner, tells me that more often than not, when he finds a wonderful fabric, he waits for the perfect piece to receive it, rather than the reverse.
The story Boketto builds around landmark pieces of design feels self-evident to the visitor : Rubelli fabric draped over Zaha Hadid's legendary Moon Sofa, Paulin's Ribbon Chair.
At Boketto, you do not look at a piece of furniture, you walk into a room, and the visit turns ritual. Noé Kuremoto's ceramic sculptures stand tall, as if watching over the place, while the smoke of a palo santo rises from the pendants signed by Lucie de Chaumont.
A never-ending summer
The Galerie Oasis duo, Léa Zéroil and Robin Costes, is opening Club Pacifico. Behind the bar, a hand-painted backdrop : a sunset with palm shadows falling across it, until you can no longer tell which ones are painted. Above, a mother-of-pearl ceiling breaks the light into small discs.
At Oasis, texture, reflection and light weave a pattern that tells a story of holidays, the sea, and the shore. Everything transports us.
A winter garden, facing south
Let us imagine what comes next, somewhere else. A room opening onto the sea above Cap Ferrat, its walls painted with greenery that continues the planting on the terrace : you no longer know where the pinède stops. A rattan bar, blue ceramics, two tall lamps, and a ceiling that holds the six o'clock light.
Something cold is served, palm shadows drift across the painted walls, and summer has no reason to end. Below, the version imagined by Pinto, somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and Parisian elegance.
A certain desire for silence
La Lune Galerie's exhibition, A Certain Desire for Silence, nonetheless gives us a great deal to read : in the carved bas-reliefs of the bookshelf signed Sepa x Atelier Pesmois, which evoke pages of the books it might hold.
A first, and a bet won
It is the first time Pierre Frey has opened a showroom dedicated to its furniture range, and the bet has paid off : a salon in bold colours, where the patterns answer one another without arguing. Our favourite is the Betty seating line, which works as well indoors as out.
A thousand facets, one collection
A guided tour of Pinto, a many-faceted universe built around Fahad Hariri's collection of antiques. Each room opens onto a different world : the museum, the cabinet of curiosities, the winter garden. His office, on this article's cover, belongs to the first two — a full library behind the desk, and on the desk, objects brought back from travels, to be looked at one by one.
At Pinto, the inside / outside idea returns, carried by natural materials and by their trompe-l'œil. A cannage motif appears in the wallpaper, then again on the fabric of the Ipanema sofa, whose resin base in a bronze patina is our favourite detail.
Wood, in depth
The most interesting material of the week, especially in this black version : a sideboard and a table where marquetry creates a real sense of depth. On the table, the number of layers is hard to make out, and that is exactly what holds our attention. The light changes with every angle, because it reflects differently off each piece of veneer.
Marquetry assembles veneer sheets a few tenths of a millimetre thick, cut and then glued into a pattern over a solid structure. Its modern form settled in European workshops in the 17th century, and grain direction does all the work : two sheets of the same wood, oriented differently, do not return the same light. That shift, more than colour, is what draws the pattern.
A new scenography, bound for London
Discovering the new scenography at Galerie May, as the gallery prepares for its first PAD London. We loved the CHESS II sofa in its luminous grey damask, and the imposing base of the TORR table, which also comes as a pedestal.
One week, four lessons
The fabric can come before the piece
It is not the only good way to work, but it is worth taking seriously, above all for vintage and exceptional pieces. It says a great deal about how to interpret a historic piece of design : a point of view that ends up feeling inevitable.
The threshold as a motif
Cannage, resin, outdoor seating, painted decors : the inside / outside border is worked through materials, before volumes, and with a sense of play.
Light makes the colour
Murano glass turning sea-green, a mother-of-pearl ceiling, a grey damask, marquetry that shifts from one angle to the next : these pieces are chosen under the light they will live in.
Details weave the story, in silence
A sculpture watching over a salon, the smoke of a palo santo rising from a pendant. They are noticed last, and they are what stays with you.
Alessia Camosetti, Setti
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