Tartan, leopard, cashmere… patterns reign supreme in Maryam Mahdavi's duplex
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A Leonard dress, 1960s Pucci sunglasses and an 1980s belt purchased from a cabaret clothing store in Los Angeles, Maryam Mahdavi stands next to the “Love Boat” stool she designed for the French designer Leonard. © Sylvie Becquet
Interior designer, designer and artist, this jack-of-all-trades thought of his miniature Parisian duplex like a box of wonders dressed in designer fabrics and heterogeneous objects that look alike.
By
Louise Prothery
“At home, the rule is that there is none,” says Maryam Mahdavi, who welcomes her clients in her personal apartment like in a showroom. Past the front door of this lair nestled on the top floor of a building in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, it is an explosion of colors, fabrics, objects, eras and styles that dialogue with each other, madly sticking to the codes of good taste as well as trends of the moment. The interior atmosphere created by this warm Franco-Iranian is like her words: full of emotions and assumed obsessions. That for fashion, for example, her first job, which she began after training at the Parisian school Esmod. Her walls are covered with vintage fabrics from major brands – Yves Saint Laurent, Etro, Burberry – unearthed from a specialist merchant in Brussels where she once lived. "It's a bit as if I had staged my dressing room from floor to ceiling", confides this unconditional 1980s fan who does not hesitate to mix these powerful prints with Persian rugs. An artist at heart, marked by a wealthy but wounded childhood, Maryam Mahdavi exhibited her first productions in 2002, fragile tables with trembling legs, called "Twins", at London's David Hicks, before joining the prestigious Perimeter gallery today. now disappeared.
Her latest collection, inspired by the joyful lightness of the television series "The Love Boat" ("La Croisière s'amuse", en vf) of the 80s, is a collaboration with the Leonard house from which she has recycled certain fabrics to cover the magnetic slabs with stools designed like golden cages, a reference there too to its past. "These slabs can be attached to other metal supports, a principle of flexibility and freedom that I practice throughout my apartment and more generally in small spaces, a new world that I discovered while creating a scenography in 2018 for the Swedish giant Ikea,” says the designer. The bridge table unfolds to improvise a candlelit dinner, the kitchen units disappear behind a Moroccan fabric with sequins, the straw hats turn into lampshades... Just as this transformist leaves her jeans-sneakers uniform for a dress in silk jersey that she girds with a stitched tieback on her pink taffeta curtain. Because life is definitely too short to take yourself seriously.
Orientalist tent
© Sylvie Becquet
Under a panther-patterned fabric drape (Yves Saint Laurent), the late 18th century bridge table houses a pair of lacquer lamps, 1970s (Maison Jansen), and a 19th century bronze lion by animal sculptor Edouard Delabrierre. On the wall, bronze applique with serrated leaves (Baguès). The floor is enlivened by a row of contrasting antique Persian wool rugs.
Textile daydreams
© Sylvie Becquet
In the living room upholstered in a paisley print (Etro), the wrought iron bench seat plays with superimposition with silk velvet (Casal) and is lit up with a sequined cushion and another in ancient Persian fabric adorned with a silk flower. On the vintage Ikea tables from the 1950s, religious statuettes stand alongside an owl ice cube holder (Serpette market), a palm tree from Tangier crafts and a mottled pink opaline glass. “Sputnik” suspension from the 80s mottled, vintage curved floor lamp and another from the 1970s (Jacques-Emmanuel de Caters gallery).
Telescoping of cultures
© Sylvie Becquet
Encounter between the tartan of Vivienne Westwood, the Indian elephants of the Etro house and a flowery carpet by Madeleine Castaing (Codimat). Under the mezzanine, the “Soupçon” table, created by Maryam Mahdavi, has found its chair, an icon of the 1970s in metal and Formica, dressed in a vintage tapestry. The red floor lamp from the 1950s (these years boutique, in Paris) illuminates an 18th century armchair upholstered in the Scottish style.
Secrecy box
© Sylvie Becquet
At the top of the spiral staircase, Maryam Mahdavi's bedroom contains her personal belongings: a collection of cleverly hung designer shoes and watercolors simply placed on the floor. On the walls, vintage tartan (Burberry) and fabric with elephants (Etro).
A diamond love
© Sylvie Becquet
Total Burberry tartan look for this refuge in the attic, enhanced with a pair of black and gold wall lights (Home and Garden antiques), an improvised bedside table with a few boxes of Leonard designer dresses, and a Limoges porcelain candle (Bona Fide).
