BEARS ON PARADE

If there is one piece of furniture that has captured the attention of our era more than any other, it's this one.

- By STEPHEN WALLIS

The Ours Polaires. The Polar Bears. To some insiders, simply the Polars. Sensually curvaceous and decadently cocooning, these minimalist yet ultra-cushy sofas and chairs designed by Jean Royère in the 1940s represent the ultimate in cozy-chic sophistication—particularly for the elite tastemakers who can afford them.

High-profile owners include prominent collector Maja Hoffmann, shoe designer Christian Louboutin, and art dealer Larry Gagosian, who outfitted his New York City living room with a cherry-red Polar Bear sofa next to a swirling Cy Twombly painting, also in reds. Collector-dealers Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan had two chairs and a sofa in their Upper East Side townhouse, perched beneath an Alexander Calder mobile, before they sold the set—still in its original celery-green mohair—at Christie's a few years ago for a record $3.42 million, more than twice the estimate.

“Royère is the iconic decorator. His colors, design, and lines are timeless,” says Flavien Gaillard, Christie's head of design in Europe. For some time now it has been de rigueur among discerning collectors to pair their blue chip artworks with vintage furnishings by a select group of 20th-century French designers that includes Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret, Diego Giacometti, and the Lalannes, as well as Royère. “The Polar Bear set has often felt like that first box to check,” says Richard Wright, head of the Chicago-based auction house Wright. “It's fantastically chic furniture that fits into a lot of interiors. It doesn't look at all dated and stuck in its time.”