If you want fresh and irreverent home design ideas, you can’t go wrong with the curves, from languorous to hairpin that define the creative world of India Mahdavi. Based in Paris, the Iranian-born designer takes wood, ceramic, metal, and lacquer and combines them into playful, captivating interiors.
Inspire yourself in some of Mahdavi’s best projects!
Mahdavi’s latest public spaces include the Café Français brasserie in Paris (podlike seating in red and blue; acres of bronze-tone mirror) and Le Cloître hotel in Arles (baroque mosaic floors; off-kilter palettes of peacock-blue, moss-green, and saffron). Pop Art liveliness infuses her lighting and furniture designs, among them her signature Bishop stool/low table, which resembles a chess piece writ large.
India Mahdavi is the reigning queen of color. “It’s the best way to bring sunshine into a space,” says the Paris-based interior designer. “Sunshine is happiness, and my work is about happiness.” Her daring clients clamor for more. “They aren’t looking for mainstream,” Mahdavi explains. “They tend to be people who are looking ahead.” Indeed, the strong individuality of her rooms is not for the faint of heart.
Mahdavi attributes her love of color to her Irano-Egyptian heritage and cosmopolitan childhood. Born in Tehran, she was raised in America, Germany, and France. During college her studies kept her moving, from Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts to New York’s School of Visual Arts and Parsons, before she settled in the French capital to work as artistic director for Christian Liaigre. “Location is the starting point for all my projects,” she says. “Each fits one location, one client. So they are all like couture pieces.”
After seven years with Liaigre, she set out on her own in 1999 and now oversees a studio, showroom, and shop—all within a few doors of one another on the rue Las Cases.
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Awarded France’s Officier des Arts et des Lettres last year, Mahdavi is still slightly under the radar Stateside, though her spirited line of furnishings can be found at the New York-based Ralph Pucci International. But she predicts her bold aesthetic sense is where the zeitgeist is headed. “After decades of beige and white, Europeans are finally bringing color back into their living rooms,” Mahdavi says. “I think America is probably ready, too.”
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