The Modular Couch Beloved by Frank Ocean and Kanye West

Pierre Paulin, the legendary French furniture designer, died in 2009. It's only now that the rest of the world is catching up with his visions.

- SAM REISS

A COUPLE OF years ago, a video was posted from inside Kanye West's enormous hangar-size studio. Sitting in front of a theatre-screen wall was a huge diamond-latticed sofa-electric blue, with peaks and valleys-that jumped out more than anything else in the room.

The couch, called the Dune, was conceptualized by the late interior designer Pierre Paulin in the early 1970s and is today considered a masterpiece. Remarkable, given the couch's early difficulty in even getting made. Paulin envisioned it as part of a collection of modular furniture he designed for Herman Miller-a collection that was never put into production.

It wasn't until 2014 that the couch was brought to life-with help from Louis Vuitton-as part of a stewardship initiative called the Pierre Paulin Program, formed by the designer's family to revive his old works.

PPP leaks out a couple of Dunes a year, more or less, and introduces other pieces from the programme, like the Déclive n°5-a cool, U-shaped armless chair-and wilder Paulin designs that were never produced (or only in extremely limited runs), with every new model made to Paulin's original, exacting specifications.