Form And Function

The latest exhibition of Objets Nomades by Louis Vuitton features elegant furniture by two new designers, Paris-based India Mahdavi and Japan’s Tokujin Yoshioka, writes Steven Crane

- Steven Crane

India Mahdavi was born to wander. “I’m a nomad,” says the Irano-Egyptian designer, who is based for the time being in Paris. “I’ve lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Venice, and New York. I love movement and I think happiness is closely connected to an open, cosmopolitan mind; my life is all about melting pots, mixes, colours, exchanging and sharing.”

So when Louis Vuitton gave Mahdavi free rein to create a clever, cosmopolitan furnishing for its Objets Nomades collection—which through the vision of creative contemporary designers pays homage to the house’s special orders of the past, such as an iconic “bed trunk” produced in 1874 for French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza—she immediately conceptualised a multicultural, hybrid object, one not limited to a single function.

Inspired by the spirit of travel, Mahdavi designed the Talisman side table, a piece whose form isn’t necessarily the sum of its programmatic functions. “When I designed this table, I immediately thought about revisiting those famous oriental side tables, both nomadic and hybrid, which appear for tea and disappear for the siesta,” she says.