Studio Putman Ventures From Interiors to Accessories
● The Paris-based design agency teamed with Hong Kong-based luxury house Sauvereign to create a range of versatile wearable ornaments.
Hong Kong-based luxury house Sauvereign is carving out a new category of accessories — "wearable sculptural ornaments" — that can serve as a brooch, a belt buckle, a pendant, or be clipped onto its classic shoes and handbags.
Founder Bertrand Mak collaborates with an array of specialty ateliers in Europe and Asia, and brings to the table a proprietary gold-leaf technique that he first started developing on shoe heels back when he worked for British footwear designer Rupert Sanderson.
Adding another layer of narrative to Sauvereign, Mak collaborates with an array of artistic types, having already done projects with photographers Wing Shya and Christopher Makos.
His latest dance partner is Studio Putman, the Paris-based interior design agency founded by the late Andrée
Putman and run by her daughter Olivia Putman since 2007.
"Art and culture is very important to the house and to myself," Mak explained in a joint interview at Putman's chic Paris apartment. "We are looking at having grand masters from all over the world come together, so naturally Olivia is one of them."
The co-branded collection of ornaments — Mak calls them "gems" — is being unveiled this week at the Sauvereign flagship boutique in Hong Kong, with retail prices hovering around $1,500 for gold ones, and limited-edition gemstone versions at $11,225. An exceptional wall mirror goes for $61,250, and a purse-sized iteration around $1,150.
During her storied career Andrée Putman applied her hand to such diverse projects as sunglasses, jewelry and fragrance — in addition to the Morgans Hotel in New York, Le Bon Marché's escalators, the offices of the French Fashion Federation and shop interiors for the likes of Barneys New York, Bally and Guerlain.
But this marks the first time the Putman studio's output has landed on leather goods, including sleek pumps with offkilter medallions on the toes bearing a version of the checkerboard technique pioneered by the interior design maven.
Olivia Putman lauded the "modularity" of Sauvereign's ornaments — which can also be displayed on a shelf or table as a beautifully crafted object. "It's playful," she enthused. "It's very interesting to have something you can play around with depending on your mood."
Putman and Mak also said such a versatile object fits in with today's flight to quality, and away from having too much "stuff." Indeed, the look of a top-handle bag or a pair of pumps changes when a new ornament is attached.
"It refreshes it," Mak said, describing luxury as something that endures and can be repaired. "Also if you look at Olivia's designs or Andrée's designs today, they are timeless. And this is what we set out to achieve."
Putman said she could see her mother enjoying the items from the Sauvereign project, given her affection for demonstrative jewelry, sleek heels and her penchant for playing around with her small wardrobe of favorite items.
Mak conscripted a goldsmith in Geneva to realize the ornaments, which are made using white or yellow 18-karat gold, and a specialist in Venice for the large-scale bronze mirror, one square of lapis-lazuli punctuating the golden cubes swarming around it.
The pièce de résistance ornament, dubbed Blue Sapphire, is made with 480 pieces of 24-carat gradient blue sapphire, a taper-cut yellow sapphire and a 10-mm Tahitian pearl.
Studio Putman and Mak share an obsession with finding the best craftsmen in the world to realize their designs. Mak, for example, regularly turns to a lacquer house in Kyoto, Japan, founded in 1661.
In tandem with the arrival of the Sauvereign by Studio Putman collection in stores, the partners will mount a retrospective exhibition of iconic designs by Andrée Putman and Olivia Putman at Elements mall in Hong Kong. The event, part of the annual French May
Arts Festival, will also showcase the many collaborations the interiors firm did, culminating with the Sauvereign project.
While tie-ups with other brands are par for the course today, Putman's mother did them since the 1980s, teaming with the likes of Cristofle, Lalique, Baccarat, Louis Vuitton, Charles Jourdan and Swarovski.
Founded in 2020, Sauvereign has also created limited-edition chocolates decorated with hand-placed 24-karat gold leaf.