OF OBJECTS & SENSES

AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2026, FASHION HOUSES APPROACHED INTERIORS NOT MERELY AS SPACES TO DECORATE, BUT WORLDS TO INHABIT – SHAPED BY MEMORY, MATERIAL AND MOOD.

- Words: CANDICE CHUA

THE SHAPE OF SERENDIPITY

Sometimes, the most meaningful collaborations begin not with strategy, but serendipity.

Years ago, Longchamp CEO Jean Cassegrain encountered one of Patrick Jouin’s Drop tables at a Paris design fair — a sculptural piece whose fluid silhouette lingered in Cassegrain's mind long after the fair itself. That chance encounter would eventually lead to a collaboration between Longchamp and the French industrial designer, where colour and craftsmanship meet in a collection that feels sensory, playful and distinctly Parisian all at once.

Jouin’s signature Drop side and coffee tables are reimagined according to Longchamp’s visual language, with their hand-poured enamel tops washed in watercolour-like layers of the house's signature Lumiére (light) and Héritage (dark) greens. The colours spill organically across the surfaces, bringing softness to the spun steel structures beneath the enamelled exterior. His Olo armchair echoes Longchamp’s leather heritage with leather upholstery edged in the maison’s light green tone.

But it is perhaps the Ostara lamp — produced in a limited edition of just 10 pieces — that best captures the spirit of the partnership. Conceived as a portable object, the lamp, crafted from micro-perforated grained leather and oak, borrows details from Longchamp's iconic Le Pliage bag, from its snap fasteners to its instinct for mobility. Rechargeable and softly luminous, it feels less like a lamp and more like a companion designed to move and evolve within a space.

For Jouin, whose work often explores the relationship between material, gesture and emotion, the collaboration was ultimately about extending Longchamp's codes into a “different realm” — one shaped not only by how objects appear, but how they are handled, inhabited and remembered. Here, he reflects on designing for the senses and the emotional presence objects can hold.