The collaboration Pierre Frey and Christian Astuguevieille’s fabrics born of artistry and friendship

The new ‘Coquecigrues’ collection is an energetic collision of styles born of a long creative friendship

Patrick Frey, the patriarch of fabric brand Pierre Frey, has been friends with Christian Astuguevieille for years. A design polymath, Astuguevieille (below) is the artistic director of Comme des Garçons Parfums and has designed jewellery for Hermès and Lanvin, but it’s his rope-covered furniture (stool, below) for which he’s most famous. Frey, meanwhile, is responsible for curating the extensive Pierre Frey archive – a resource used by designers and museums alike. The duo’s ‘Coquecigrues’ collection of seven wallpapers and nine fabrics marks the first time they’ve worked together. A true collision of styles, it exudes the colourful joie de vivre of Pierre Frey and the dynamic energy and artistry of Astuguevieille’s work.

The surreal ‘Les Coquecigrues’ print (right), for example, is an adaptation of a design kept at the Musée de la Toile de Jouy that dates back to 1792. To modernise it, the colours were intensified and the pattern enlarged by 300 per cent. For an even more contemporary take, there’s the ‘Symboles Les Coquecigrues M’ (far right), daubed with Astuguevieille’s graffitilike mashrabiya (a latticework often seen on Arabic buildings), the vibrant toile still visible beneath. ‘What pleases me,’ says Frey, ‘is that the collection is very French. It came from 18th-century French documents, and it is this classicism that Christian has expanded and recoloured, so that it becomes something else.’ From £192 per metre (pierrefrey.com).