The Textile Eye - Report 28

Esprit & Ornament

The Paris Shows: Maison & Objet and Paris Deco Off

Ornament is having its moment—and Paris, as ever, knew it first. This report follows the design world to its January rendezvous: Maison & Objet at Villepinte and Paris Deco Off: the showrooms, pop-ups, and parties, where the prevailing mood was layered, opulent, and historically fluent. Under the banner of Past Reveals Future, we learned how designers engage with archives—a process that begins with understanding, moves through careful study, and arrives at something genuinely new. The past is not a refuge. It is a resource.

What’s inside:

Design Themes
Eight themes chart the aesthetic landscape of the Paris shows, from Patrimoine's tapestry grandeur and Byzantine richness to the reinterpreted modernism of Mod Monde, the exuberant lushness of Tropiques, and the earthen restraint of Matière. Together they trace how ornament—disciplined, revived, and at times gloriously unrestrained—is reshaping the surface landscape for residential and contract interiors.
Museum Spotlights
Coverage of the Art Deco exhibitions from The Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Boghossian Foundation. The Musée du Quai Branly's Dragons exhibition traces the enduring pull of cross-cultural symbolism on decorative form.
French Twist & Textile Tales
Exclusive conversations with Pierre Gonalons—whose recent collaboration with silk maison Prelle opens the report's cover—and Sean Leffers, whose collection Out of Many, One asks how decorative arts can carry the weight of cultural identity with both rigor and humility.
The British Connection
My visit to Design Destination London, alongside a mill tour of Gainsborough and an archive visit to Sanderson, anchors a broader conversation about heritage, material intelligence.
Haut en Couleur
Fifty-plus pages of color direction drawn directly from the Paris shows, translated into atmospheric palette groupings.