PROFILE: INDIA MAHDAVI
A COLOURFUL LIFE IS REFLECTED IN A WILDLY SUCCESSFUL DESIGN CAREER THAT HAS KNOWN NO BOUNDARIES,
A colourful life is ref lected in a wildly successful design career that has known no boundaries
for the past seven years, Paris-based designer India Mahdavi has been returning to her native Tehran, Iran, on a regular basis. During her time there, she has not only been struck by the conviviality of the locals and the city’s chaotic nature — “It’s huge, and the traffic is terrible” — she has also found parallels with her own aesthetic. “I’ve always said, ‘I’m the Queen of Mix and Match’,” says Mahdavi. “That’s something that’s all over the place in Iran. They’re not scared of putting things together.” She now takes Farsi lessons every Saturday and is even working on a project there — a ground-up, six-storey residential building. Since setting up on her own nearly 20 years ago, Mahdavi has risen to the top of her profession. She recently completed both a restaurant for Ladurée in Geneva and the women’s fashion floor at the KaDeWe department store in Berlin. She has also been responsible for the Coburg Bar at the Connaught Hotel in London, a host of cafes in Paris (such as Le Germain) and numerous hotels, from the Townhouse Hotel in Miami and the Condesa DF in Mexico City to a desert oasis in Siwa, Egypt and Hôtel du Cloître in Arles, France. “India has a good eye and an incredible sense of colour,” says Hôtel du Cloître’s owner, Maja Hoffmann. Another fan is fashion designer Alber Elbaz, for whom Mahdavi decorated an apartment in Paris. “I loved working with her,” he says. “We had so much fun. Her work is subtle. She gives soul to the spaces she creates.” However, the Mahdavi interior that has no doubt had the biggest impact in the past few years is The Gallery at Sketch in London, the restaurant she designed in collaboration with artist David Shrigley. Extremely orderly and structured, it showcases her ‘Charlotte’ chair, whose playful form was inspired by the dessert of the same name. The space is also all powdery pink, which has become a signature hue in recent times. It features heavily in her new retail concept for the Red Valentino label, too. “It gives a nice, warm light on everybody’s faces,” says Mahdavi in her office in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. “You feel like you have a three-day tan.” The designer traces her choice of career back to the peripatetic nature of her childhood. Her father was Iranian and her mother was Scottish–Egyptian. They left Tehran when she was 18 months old and lived in the United States, Germany and France. “I suffer from the fact that we never had a family home,” says Mahdavi. “We were constantly moving from country to country, from language to language, and so I developed a profound love of the environments I didn’t have in my youth.” She went on to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and furniture, graphic and industrial design in New York before spending seven years in the office of Christian Liaigre. Her style today is almost instantly recognisable. “Her work is full of energy and has a very strong personality,” says Rossella Bisazza, who worked on an award-winning tile collection with Mahdavi for her family firm, Bisazza. “There is always a joy and a playfulness, which is quite unique.” Mahdavi is best known for her daring colour combinations, which occasionally create a deliberate dissonance. “What’s interesting for me is how you can put them in danger,” she says. “You can assemble them where it’s almost like you’re walking on the edge of a cliff.” She also has a love of lacquer and velvet. For her, the latter denotes an inherent sense of comfort. All her trademark touches are very much in evidence in the furniture and accessories she sells exclusively through her two stores on Paris’s Rue Las Cases. She has edited more than 100 pieces, most of which were originally designed for one of her interiors projects. Her bestseller is the now-iconic ‘Bishop’ stool, so named for its resemblance to a chess piece. Mahdavi offers it in a new colour every year and has transformed it into both a table, by adding a top, and a bar stool, with the addition of a cushion. “It’s like a Barbie doll,” she says. “It comes with lots of accessories.” And the direct contact that the boutiques offer to her clients has given her a good idea of just why she has been, and continues to be, so successful. “People are touched because they feel my work is personal,” says Mahdavi. “They take it as a piece of emotion.”