Jonathan Matti collaborates with De Gournay of Paris
Aserendipitous meeting catapulted
Jonathan Matti no less, dahlings, to the elite orbit of collaborators who’ve created or conceptualized images for De Gournay, the ultra-luxe wallpaper company constantly featured in top design and shelter titles from all over the world. The likes of New York decorator Jeffrey
Bilhuber, Portugal’s rock star design house Oitoemponto, footwear label Aquazzura’s visionary founder Edgardo Osorio from Florence, as well as fashion muse Kate
Moss are just some of the high-profile personalities who’ve become part of De Gournay’s roster of creatives.
The chance encounter happened in London more than two years ago when Jonathan bumped into Alice Uglow, De Gournay’s former international sales director, and her colleague Jemma Cave.
Jemma, the wallpaper company’s creative director, was just too delighted to meet the Manila-based decorator. “Oh, my goodness!” Jonathan recalled Jemma said, “You’re the Jonathan Matti that we constantly talk about at the studio.”
Jonathan has been buying De Gournay wall coverings for his roster of international clients, which include Manila’s society figures, tycoons, and industrialists, as well as a few royals who prefer the interior designer’s discreet manners. Though he has a distinctive stamp, Jonathan is known for tweaking De Gournay’s designs to suit his clients’ personalities so that no two projects will ever be the same. His meticulous attention to detail and addressing his clients’ needs certainly made a lasting impression with De Gournay’s executives, which led to the collaboration.
It took more than two years for Jonathan to put the project together. The idea for the design, titled “Latina Manila,” is drawn from 19th century Manila. “The wallpaper gives you an overview of history, to which we added the notion of fantasy,” explained Jonathan. The result — a tantalizing imagery cast in “fading light” — evokes a languid, idyllic Manila. It depicts characters garbed in colonial-style costumes and huts on stilts set against a landscape populated with colorful native flora and fauna.
Latina Manila was presented to the world late last year in an intimate cocktail reception at De Gournay’s studio in Paris. The elegant, low-key event drew the global jet set friends and clients of Jonathan Matti and De Gournay like style icon Maricris Zobel, beauty and brains
Margie Moran, lingerie designer Chantal Thomass, and art and antiques patron Eduardo Molino Dubost. Power couples in attendance were banking magnate Sergio and Malu Millerman, Don Papa Rum’s Stephen Caroll and Gina Garcia, and real estate wiz Joel Journe and Melissa Lopez. On hand, too, were representatives of Elements Fine Furnishing Fabrics Inc., De Gournay’s Philippine distributor. The presence of international architect Simon Burkart, top antique dealer
Alexandre Biaggi, and decorative arts specialist Sophie
Ardois cemented Jonathan’s international stature in the world of design. With its global exposure, the De Gournay project is certainly a high point not just in Jonathan’s stellar career but in the country design landscape as well. Aprés its introduction to other cosmopolitan cities, De Gournay and Patricia Liang of Elements thought that it’s time for Latina Manila’s homecoming.
The dazzling wallpaper was on view last Oct. 18 at Elements Fine Fabric Inc.’s showroom in Makati.