PARIS DESIGN WEEK — A CITY IN CONVERSATION
Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau’s installation at the Hôtel de la Marine
There are cities that speak in architecture. Others, in fashion. Paris, perhaps uniquely, whispers in design.
This September, as the summer air began to shift and the city resumed its quiet rhythm, Paris once again transformed—not through a single fairground spectacle, but through something more organic, more dispersed, more human. Across four districts and over 500 locations, Paris Design Week unfolded like a story told room by room, gallery by gallery, each exhibition a chapter in a broader conversation about where design is going—and why it matters.
Courtesy RH
What was once the satellite to the better-known Maison & Objet has now become something far more textured. This year, the design week stole the spotlight—not through grand declarations, but through thoughtful nuance. The emphasis wasn’t on novelty. It was on presence. On craft. On rethinking form and material in ways that feel both grounded and imaginative.
Throughout the city, historic ateliers hosted intimate showings. Courtyards bloomed with temporary installations. Quiet streets lit up with pop-ups and poetic objects designed not to impress, but to invite pause. A chair in raw timber that asks you to consider where it came from. A lamp that bends light like memory. Textiles that carry with them the fingerprint of their maker.
Much like Milan’s Salone, Paris Design Week is no longer about being in one place—it’s about being everywhere. And yet, nowhere felt rushed. Even in the city's most celebrated corners, there was space to breathe. To notice. To feel.
Among the many highlights, a few stood out not for their scale but for their subtlety. Galerie Joseph hosted a series of tactile, monastic ceramics that blurred the line between sculpture and function. At the Marais, installations embraced raw materials—stone, sand, pigment—reminding us that beauty often lies in what is left unfinished. There were dialogues between fashion and form, as designers moved beyond clothing and into interior realms. And throughout it all, one could sense a return to essence: materials allowed to speak, objects made not to decorate but to endure.
This wasn’t about trends. It was about texture. About creating pieces that live slowly and honestly—pieces that belong in spaces that invite silence as much as style.
Courtesy Shapiro Studio
Back at Istorja House, where every object is chosen with care and every corner tells a story, these are the moments that resonate. Not just the grand showcases, but the quiet revolutions. The small, soulful gestures that make a space feel like home.
Paris, in these early days of September, reminded us that design isn’t just something we look at. It’s something we live with. And when done with intention, it can shape how we feel, how we gather, and how we begin again.