Karl Lagerfeld Launches Luxury Furniture Collection
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The auction of Karl Lagerfeld’s estate last year contained enough furniture to fill a museum, with lots ranging from a Jean Prouvé desk to a set of chairs designed by Philippe Starck for Cassina, the Italian furniture-maker that Lagerfeld liked so much that he dedicated an entire book of photographs to its creations.
Reflecting the late designer’s passion for interior design, the brand he founded is launching a namesake furniture line and homewares range, set to be presented at the Salone del Mobile trade show in Milan with a dedicated showroom from Monday to April 23.
More from WWD
Pier Paolo Righi, chief executive officer of Karl Lagerfeld, traces the root of the project back to his first meeting with the late designer.
“He hosted a lunch for me at his apartment on Rue des Saints-Pères and I remember very vividly — of course, as one would, meeting him for the very first time — that he took a lot of time leading me through his whole apartment and explaining, very much in detail, everything he had in mind and thought when he was furnishing the apartment,” Righi tells WWD.
“It was really amazing to see how passionately involved he was in how it not only looked great, but in the sense of what it all meant and how he composed it,” he recalls.
A compulsive collector, Lagerfeld bought and sold entire catalogues of furniture as he cycled through eras with his interior designs for various residences. He was capable of switching from the sort of gilded 18th-century splendor usually found at the Palace of Versailles to an apartment so stark, he compared it to a spaceship.
“I find the joy of collecting, the fun of hunting for objects, the exciting thing,” he once told WWD. “But once I [win] it, I lose interest. I don’t want to be a curator living in a museum.”
One constant was his love for the Bauhaus and Art Deco design movements, and his attachment to Hamburg, Germany, his birthplace, and Paris, his adopted home.
Those elements were the foundation for the Karl Lagerfeld Maison collection, created in collaboration with Matteo Nunziati, known for his interior designs for luxury hotels and residential projects in destinations including Italy, the Middle East and the U.S.
“We felt that Matteo Nunziati very much understood where Karl was coming from in his favoring of these two periods and the different places, and it felt like he can translate this very naturally in a furniture collection that catches your eye immediately,” Righi says, noting that a new guest designer will be invited each season.
The furniture groups are named after Lagerfeld’s favorite neighborhoods in Paris. The Saint-Germain living room set includes a sofa upholstered in ivory bouclé fabric that doubles as a small library, with sides that include built-in shelves — a nod to the designer’s personal collection of more than 300,000 volumes.
The Quai Voltaire kitchen features a dark marble counter and liquid steel column doors, while the Rue de l’Université light fixtures play with suspended discs. Throughout each space, a monochrome palette is juxtaposed with neutral hues and pops of red, like the border on a rug that nods to the frame that Lagerfeld liked to draw around his sketches.
“The starting point really was, what would an apartment look like that Karl would feel great to live in?” Righi says. “It is a very luxurious positioning, something that Karl would have loved and liked to have in his home, we believe.”
The Karl Lagerfeld Maison line is produced under license by The One Design, a recently created entity headed by a group of investors who are longtime experts in the production and distribution of Italian luxury furniture. The company is run by Lorenzo Marconi, the CEO of SCIC Italia, known for its high-end kitchens.
Each piece is made in Italy to the highest standards, a quality that is reflected in the prices, which range from 1,850 euros for a table lamp to 23,000 euros for the Saint-Germain sofa.
This is in line with the upscale nature of the design projects that Lagerfeld personally oversaw, which included functional sculptures for the Carpenters Workshop Gallery and a cutlery set for Christofle.
“I would not exclude that at some point we might do something much more in the accessible part, as Karl also reached from luxury to accessible in the way he ideated,” Righi says. “But as a starting point, it feels right to go from that end.”
The luxury positioning also aligns with the brand’s hotel and residential projects, including The Karl Lagerfeld, a five-star hotel in Macau that marked the designer’s biggest foray into the hospitality segment, and its first branded luxury residences in Marbella, Spain, currently under construction.
“When we look at these residential projects right now, we also think about how they could be furnished,” Righi explains. “We’re in very concrete talks and discussions with other residential projects that we will hopefully be able to announce in the not-too-distant future.”
In addition to the Milan showroom, which will remain open year-round, he plans to open a monobrand store for the furniture line, likely in 2026.
In the meantime, the products — alongside a line of accessories including cushions, plates and rugs — will be available in selected high-end stores globally and presented to architects for private projects. Lagerfeld would no doubt approve.
Best of WWD
