Episode 8: Marie-Anne Derville

In Episode 8 of Handle with Care, Adam and Laura meet interior decorator, furniture designer, scenographer, and friend of the pod Marie-Anne Derville, who has in recent years become one of the most interesting and widely followed decorators in the industry. Over tea in her wonderful apartment in the centre of Paris, they explore her distinctive and intuitive way of approaching interior decoration and her own practice.

Marie-Anne discusses her early days in the world of design alongside Pierre Yovanovitch, her collaboration with Nicolas Ghesquière and Louis Vuitton, some of her key influences, from Madeleine Castaing to Louise de Vilmorin, and her passion for gaffer tape. All with wit and humour!

Follow Marie-Anne's instagram here and visit her website, where she shows her line of furniture and available pieces for sale. 

Follow our adventures @adamcharlaphyman and @laurakugel_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hi everyone, I'm Laura Krugill.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

And I'm Adam Charlotte Hyman. Welcome to Handle with Care, the podcast you didn't know you needed about curtains, chairs, rugs, and gaffer tape. Today we meet with interior decorator, furniture designer, scenographer, friend of the pod, and cult figure Marie Anne Derville at her apartment slash studio slash showroom in Paris' 7th arrondissement.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Marianne started her career working with Pierre Jovanovich and set up her own practice just a few years ago. As well as designing interiors for a handful of private clients, she's been doing more and more scenography, and most famously has been collaborating with Louis Vuitton and Nicolas Gesquia for the past year. She has her own way of working based on her very own intuition and eye.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

We are so excited to chat with you, and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I'm very honored. I'm a big fan of your work and of your mockups and about your manual genius, which I don't have at all. I'm a terrible drawer. I see things, I visualize things very well. I'm not able to modify myself. People around me help me with their savoir-faire. That's why for me it's fundamental in my work, people working with me, or the talents, because I just have the visual talent.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Do you feel like a big challenge for you is finding people to actually execute work and be good collaborators? Is that very hard or has that been easy for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

No, I have to say it has been easy. It's very natural. Everything in my life and in my work is very natural. The chance we have in Paris, it's uh so tiny, and everyone is related to everyone. This world is a huge community. It's really what I like, this family spirit. And also I think the knowledge is has been very much preserved.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

How do you show somebody you're working for what you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

With time, I'm doing more and more scenography or design, less interior design itself. And I have to say, I always have a hard time with projecting an image as interior design agencies are requested to do. When I was working at Pierre Jovanovich, it was wonderful because at the beginning it was very organic. So we were not at all using these tools of 3D, of renderings. It was very much about trust. Pierre had a link of confidence and trust with his client, and he was saying, Oh, here we're gonna do this room in uh this color and this fabric, and you should buy this piece of furniture because it goes very well with this floor lamp. But we don't have to show it on an artificial image. Me, I'm totally autodidact. I learned my work with Pierre Jovanovich, and I had an hard time. In fact, when things became to change in agencies, like maybe 10 years or eight years ago, when it was in French, we say a passage obligé, but something like we had to do to project in an image. And for me, it was a bit a shock, a cultural shock, because I'm not interested. I'm saying this about artificial images. The drawing is something else. In a drawing, there is poetry, it will never be exactly the drawing. This is so stupid to think an interior is gonna be exactly what you see on an image. Yeah, but for a house which is lived, it's a nonsense. You know, you you buy a lamp, you don't know where exactly the lamp is gonna go because it's just about a feeling when you are in the room.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

That's so liberating to hear. It's so true. I mean, that's how I would work on my own house. I would never like sit down and draw. I would buy cool things and then I would find a place for them. But if you are working for a client, then you must have really special relationships where they have to really trust you.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yes, clients I'm working with, uh usually it's on a very long time. It's more about as a bit old-style relation between a client and a decorator. And these people understand their thinking as I'm thinking. For me, my work, it's an exact prolongation of my mind. And so I have to be in a very deep relation of understanding with my clients. We have to think in the same way. And the few times I had some experiences with clients who have another way of thinking, like exactly buying a chair and being completely anxious about where this chair will go. I'm not the right person for you. A chair will go where it will decide to go.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

It makes sense that you can inspire that kind of trust because even when I'm sitting in this room, the combination of nonsensical placements of things and yet such utter precision is really confounding. Like you really are so good at putting things together. It feels like you must have put everything exactly where it needs to go. But I can understand that you didn't really, actually, now that you're explaining it, which is so special. So I can imagine somebody saying, you know, we just have to trust her.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

I think mainly people call me to be in a relation of going along and think and propose. I have very strong taste and point of views. And at the same time, I I love to work with someone who has a frame, a structure, of spirit, of taste, who already has culture, and who, in a way, drives me too.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

And all the people I'm having a good relation with is people who knows who they are, what they like. For sure, work is always a challenge, but um, I can only be good if I can feel somebody knows me and is trusting me for what I am, and is not expecting from me something I cannot do. And I've been lucky enough to meet these people, and this is my biggest desire is to work for very few people on a very long term and to act step by step. That's my dream. My DNA is to bring some life and some poetry and something that you cannot project, in fact, on a paper. I think this is my strength. It's a bit a mystery why I'm doing this today, why I arrived at this point, because I can't really say I'm an entire designer. I think I'm more a scenographer, I'm more like playing with my decor. My thing is to create beauty with objects who are talking to each other as in a game, like in a game of a child, you know. And it's exactly what I was doing when I was a kid, and I think that brought me where I am today.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

And uh what kind of games do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Of a little girl who is playing in her bedroom and creating houses and playing with her dolls. Me when I was a kid in the playground of the school, I was uh we were imaginating being in an apartment. So we were living in an apartment as a game. Then I was coming back and I was creating a full world in my room with my object, my images, and I think this in a way um created me, my personality, because I I had already the conscious of objects talking together. Why is this bottle is nice close to this other one?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

I think it really comes from my fantasy and from all the uh cartoons I saw. I was obsessed with cartoons when I was a kid, and very early I have souvenir of imaginating total words with an object. And in fact, I think my first relation with desire, it was around objects. And I was obsessed with Barbie, I was obsessed with dolls, with Playmobil, with like miniature horses. I remember this relation of very deep desire with these objects, as when you are in love, when you see someone you want to be with, you know. This is a very strong sensation I still have when I'm thinking about that. And I'm doing the same today in a way. When I look around me and what I created here in my living room, it's exactly the same, just objects have changed. It's like uh lamps with Pompey and little black tables in lacquer and armchairs and things I found. So it's not Barbie anymore, and uh it's exactly the same feeling I have, and I'm I'm with my objects and things I've chosen, and I feel well and I feel happy because they are reflection of myself.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

So that really rings true. Like every single thing that's in this apartment right now is like the best freaking thing. And when I see a photo that you post on Instagram, my jaw drops every time. And it actually is a feeling of desire, and I can really feel that comes through. Like you're able to transmit your own desire through these things.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

And I think the attraction that you're describing, you can only transmit this kind of desire if it's genuine. But I think for people who follow you, they may not realize that actually when you post a nice image, you're posting it for yourself, so you're still extending that game.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Instagram for me is it's still a game, it's still like a playground.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

And it's a game with yourself. Like, what's a win?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

I think I have the feeling of winning if I'm still happy after two hours to see this image and feel like perfectly aligned with this image. And if I still want to play with it, it's very exciting. And I think we are very lucky to work in this field because images are completely related of our childhood.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

It's so cool that you say that because I encounter a lot of people that think of design as actually like one of the most grown-up things you can possibly do. I work a lot for people that are moving into their first nice house as grown-ups. That is like my most classic client is a couple. Maybe they have a kid or they're gonna have a kid, and they're getting their first really nice place, and they have to find a way to make their taste together, and they're playing adult, and I guess they think of it as extremely serious business. They are playing grown-up. It is a game.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Playing grown-up, but sometimes they forgot about it. I never forgot, basically. This work of interior design is paradoxal because, in a way, you you need to be completely into fantasy, yeah, and at the same time, you need to be completely pragmatical, you know, uh keeping a budget, keeping a timeline, listening to your clients' desires, which sometimes are terrible, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

So can you tell us a little bit about a few people and references that uh feed this playfulness? People you admire or decorators, or yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Um so basically, when uh I started my way in this uh field of interior design at Pierre Jovanovich. So he was the one uh who gave me basically my chance. I was coming from nowhere, I didn't know anything. I was working in publishing music and journalism, indie music. I always followed what were my passions, but when I arrived, I already had a very strong personality. You know, I was 27 and the agency at the time were expanding so much, and very soon uh Pierre started to understand who I was. We we began to laugh a lot, uh he and I. And our link was very much built on this sense of humor, how we play, basically, because he's an autodidact too, he he's someone completely out of scale, out of frames. And so basically, once we recognized each other, he started to trust me, and it was my huge chance in life because I learned everything because I had this business card to go in galleries, and I will be always very grateful to Pierre for that because at the time it was unique. I'm not sure it could happen again today, as everything is so framed, and you have to know how to use the computer tools and the renderings again and all these things. For us, it was very instinctive. And then once I was in the agency, I very much built my culture myself. I remember once I was there in the offices and I saw this book of Madeleine Castin lying on the table, and I loved it. I was like, What, what's this thing? You know, I was very surprised and very attracted. And one day Pierre arrived in the studio in this office and he said, What is this book? Who cares about that? It's ugly. I hate this Madeleine Castin. Let's get rid of this book if someone wants to keep it. I don't want to see it anymore. So I took it and I discovered this woman, and I think she it has been very important for me to discover Madeleine Castin because I recognized myself in how she was working, in her relation with the decor, with poetry, and she was creating the houses as dreams. That was her thing, basically. And she didn't really care about the client, she was doing what she wanted to do because she had a very strong vision, a very strong personality, and she was saying, This is good, this is not good. She she brought a new eye. She invented basically completely a style, and her decor were completely imperfect. It was more about the feeling, it was more about life and sensation and fantasy. And I recognized very much myself in this imperfection. She was a woman of character, and she really she knew what she wanted. And she opened this very iconic shop or boutique Rue Jacob. She was a decorator, but she was also an antique dealer. And this shop basically was looking like a house, so it was very new at the time. She painted all the facade in black lacquer, so it was like I think in the late 40s, and she was reinventing a style that we call Napoleon III. So she took a lot of her inspiration in La Malmaison. And uh I think she was creating desire again. She was a woman people wanted to be with, they wanted to have this input. And at the time the decorators were very strong personalities, they were not giving any choices. It was like that. Your room is gonna be like that, and you need this piece because it's great, and you have nothing to say, basically. You need that, or you don't speak with me again. Madeleine was like that, and so people wanted to be part of it. And they were coming to the shop and they were saying, Oh, I want this lamp. And Madeleine was saying, This lamp is not on sale, I won't sell it. And even if I want to sell it, it's too expensive for you. And so the people were like coming back, and then they were asking Madeleine to do their living room. It's this relation of why someone is creating a desire on someone else. Why do you want to be part of it? And I think this is marvelous in our world where everything is flattered and and a bit empty, and we speak to each other on Zoom with filters and like where is the truth? And uh I think Madeleine was very much in the truth, and I am too in my work in a very humble way. I'm not pretending to be anyone, but I can see there is uh something about that. I can see that. Why are my messy pictures are creating an impact on people because something is happening in there is spirit somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

So you mentioned earlier that Madeleine Castin was a decorator and an art dealer. Yes. I know that's also something we have talked about independently, the two of you, obviously buying furniture from dealers or other sources on behalf of your clients, but increasingly also realizing that uh there are opportunities to make and starting to buy things. Are you comfortable to describe yourselves, Adam and Mayan, as dealer decorators?

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yes, totally. Because I realize to do my work I have to buy, I buy, and it's also how I'm building my taste and my work. And then I think a house for us is always in movement, it has to change. Objects have to change and to be reimplaced, and it's like a theater. And um so it yeah, it very naturally I think I'm developing this activity of being a dealer, as Madeleine Castan was doing. Everything is on sale uh here, basically. I can refuse to sell something, I can accept, it depends on the people, it depends on many things. The interesting thing is when you buy something because you have the huge, a huge desire for an object, it's because it makes your taste, it makes your house, it makes you grow, and basically it makes your style. So it's very natural to become an art dealer when you are a decorator.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Yeah, I think that sums it up so perfectly. For me, I never really was allowing myself to do it because I thought that there was a kind of conflict of interest, and I felt that it made somehow my offering to a client less specific to them. That if this is something I have and I could actually sell it to any of my clients, and I never would want anyone to think that about me and about the level of specificity and care that I'm applying to their project. I've really struggled with the whole notion of the decorator dealer for myself, even though it makes perfect sense, but I've started doing it organically because, well, I'm addicted to auctions, and the pleasant sort of surprise is that the more I like the thing, the more my clients like it. I'm feeling much more confident about it. And like you said, it is a very compelling way to grow and learn, and I think it's a very good test of whether this object is good enough for your project, is you would be happy to live with it. And I think that actually, if a client really can process that, that's a really good sign. Totally. Has your Instagram connected you to people that have felt such desire that then they have actually wanted to work with you?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

But uh, I have to say it's very mysterious because I have always used Instagram in a very spontaneous way, posting what I'm seeing, I'm enjoying it a lot. I don't know, I don't really know why. I guess it's because I've always been very spontaneous and uh very direct uh with my relation with this tool. And again, I think it's this way of acting with spontaneity and with truth. I just like this thing and I post it. I'm not really curating, or if I do now, I was not before, and it started like that because I have showed my taste in a very direct way.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

It comes through in the images that you post your confidence, I think, your confidence in your taste. Where do you think that came from? Did that come from working at Pierre Ivanovich? Was it from the transmission of reading about Madeleine Casting and other people that you admire? What is the sort of source of your taste in a way? Because it seems so crystal clear.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, I think it's a mix of many things, of course. I think I have developed a very personal taste through what I wanted to belong to. So very early, I was conscious about escaping where I was, what was my family context, and I wanted to be part of another cultural world. So each time I was reading something and seeing something, I wanted to be into it. I didn't have so much distance with what I was doing, what I was reading, what I was looking at. I had this very deep desire to learn. So I, for example, yeah, cinema has been so important, like Antonioni's movies and Visconti Romer. I remember I was seeing in the movies, and I'm sure it has been very important in my past.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

It's funny that you started off by saying that you don't have this manual gift, but then at the end of this room is this table that you ingeniously covered the top of this table with black gaffers tape, and it looks like some ripply, insane art deco, like lacquer finish that is uh rare and special from a distance, but it's just made out of tape. I have a passion for black gaffer. I am Miss Gaffer. What else have you done with that? You have you done other furniture things with that?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

What I've done with gaffer, I've done like frames with gaffer. Really? Yeah. In my ex-apartment, I have done uh a frieze, how do you say? Uh in my kitchen. And gaffer is great, it works all the time. It was also my inspiration for my first collection of furniture, which is in lacquer. And at the beginning, I wanted the socks and the end of the legs in gaffer or in vinyl. Yeah, that was my obsession. I wanted it vinyl because it was also related to Belle de jour, Bunuel, cinema, all these influences I have. And my gallery said, No way, the process of production was obviously too complicated, so I let it go. This is glossy, uh sexy material. And yeah, it's true. I have a very DIY side, and I'm not manual. And if I do something, it will be always a bit like imperfect, but it works. Visually, it works.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Something that I've been wanting to ask you. Is about the color black because it is so present in your work. I mean, you have brown and dark red and bronze and really dark green, but a lot of things, especially on Instagram, actually, that you post, read as basically black. I'm so intrigued by your use of black in interior design. What role does black play in your work aesthetically?

SPEAKER_01 22:26

I never think too much about things. So it's very natural to me, it's very spontaneous. I would say, firstly, it's very an extension of myself because I'm always dressed in black. It's my color. I don't know why, it became my color. All my first collection of furniture is in black lacquer. Because I think there is something so deep and so fundamental and so elegant, and you can't get tired of black. You get tired of the color. Me, I love colours. I wish I could use green, I love red, I love blues, but I can't live with them. I have to say, I can live with white, black, beige, brown. And the black is just it makes me feel good also because it's uh it's so pure. I don't think at all it's sad. I think black is a sort of eternity of death, not death, depth, depth, depth, profound depth. And I think I have this deep connection, it's what is driving me, it's what is sexiness, what is desirable. To me, black is sexy. There is nothing which is sexier than black.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

So cool. And it would be great to hear also more about the furniture because the furniture is so beautiful, and I know you've made lamps and tables. And where does that come from and how does that intersect with your intuitive design practice, basically?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

The first collection of furniture.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I had this link and this professional relation with uh this Gary, Justine Stagetti, based in Rome, because I used to work a lot with them when I was at Pierre Jovanovich for the project we were leading. We started like that to develop a friendship relation. Again, the power of Instagram, because they were following me on Instagram. And I guess they have been touched by that. And one day they called me and they said, Okay, Marianne, we would like to propose you to design a line of furniture. So obviously, I said, Thank you, I'm very honored, let's do it. And it came in a very spontaneous way because I just thought about pieces I want to live with. What is missing basically in my house, what I'm dreaming to have, like just a very simple black lacquer table.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

They all feel like uncanny encounters with something that you wish you had found at the flea market or something. Like they don't feel so premeditated in that way.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah, but I think it's it's my my relation with design is very much like that because I I didn't study design, I'm not really a designer. I became a designer because people are trusting me, and also I have a great team with who I'm developing my drawings, and that's why all the young people who wanted to start something without knowing how to do it should just believe in ourselves because sometimes just the vision is enough. I think I have this capacity of projecting visually what I want to have, what I'm sure to be happy with. My relation in with design is this basically. It's about what can be the peace which you will be never tired to live with. Because I'm someone who can become very quickly tired about things, about I don't know, situation, objects. And I've this is the thing with design. I don't invent anything. I don't have this pretension of being the designer like who invents some something, like Jean-Michel Villemotte, Martin Zekelli, or even like André Putman. I'm not into revolution. I'm into what is beautiful with what you want to live in a pleasant way, and it's just a lacquered black table with nice proportions. And basically, you cannot find that in the actual world. So I'm proposing that. It's about confidence.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Yeah, the confidence in something very essential. Are there other people with whom you feel like you have a spiritual, energetic connection, or that you have discovered over your learning that you have some kind of energetic connection with?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yes, sure, surely. Very strong link with Louise de Villemorin. She was an incredible woman, extraordinary woman, so funny, so full of imagination, so stylish. I I have a fascination for her, but I discovered her very late, and I have a very weird connection with her because basically my friend, Vincent Figureau, told me when I met him, it's incredible how you look like Louise de Villmorain physically. I looked at a picture and I thought, in fact, there is something. She could be someone of my family. There is an Resemblance, so we are very similar physically. So I I read her books, Madame Deu, Julieta, all her poems, and I loved it so much that I wanted to know more about her. And uh, and so I listened to so many emissions, podcasts, and archives on her. And I I don't know how to say it, but she seems like a soulmate. She's saying things, it's exactly what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking of. I have the feeling it's the best version of myself.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

What was her relationship to interiors? She must have been quite obsessed with interiors.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I think she was obsessed with objects. She says behind each object, there is a character. And this character, this person, is is nice or is not nice. It's exactly what I feel with objects because I know there is someone behind. And I think we we have exactly the same relation with passion and with uh enthusiasm. And if she wanted something, she was getting it, even if she didn't have money, you know, she was living in a in also in a fantasy. She had no limit, and she had this very strong relation with desire. She was seeing an object, she she got it basically, and then she found ways to pay it or just to work for it.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Or she was a client of my grandfather.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yeah. She collected silver animals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

She had two wonderful little holes, which are still at the gallery, Kugel, that I borrowed and I put in my decor. So basically, for this Vincent Figureau, who is an actor and he's reading very well, many masterpieces of French literature, Proust, Louis Deville Morin. And he asked me to do the decor of a lecture he was doing of Madame Deux of Louis Deville Morin. So that was basically the first little theatrical decor I was called for. Again, uh an incredible sign, no, to create a decor for the person maybe I admire the most for many emotional reasons that I love her so much. And so I put the little holes uh on this black lacquer table. It was an incredible meeting between objects she had and the one I created, and uh yeah, wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

So cool.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Marianne, maybe it's close to what you do when you scenograph some projects, but for the past year or so, you've also been working for Louis Vuitton and Nicolas Gesquier. And I don't know how that ties into interior design or scenography or your intuitive decorating, working for such a big company with big processes, and also having this double job of I suppose working for one man and also a company and an event and a brand, I have to say.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Everything in my life is basically a surprise because I'm living day after day. For me, each day is an adventure, and then we will see what the next. So I've been I've been called by them, and it's true we had a wonderful spontaneous connection, and it has been very natural the evolution of our relationship. At the beginning, they they asked me to basically to decorate the backstage of Nicolan for the fashion shows where he's uh receiving his closest partners, uh VIPs, and where he just focused on the moment where he's preparing himself.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

What a crazy space to have to design. It's like such a place of intense activity, but also so ephemeral and brief. It's like the backstage room of this extremely important designer for just one fashion show, or is it for all the different ones?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

We are doing a specific decor for each show.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

The first one I did was marvelous and it was a little miracle in my life because uh they had no idea about what I'm what I was preparing, what I will produce. Because I think there's until now, in this kind of world of events, it's not at all the same approach as the one we have in interior design and luxury design. And so basically, I think my big luck with them is they have decided to trust me since the beginning. And so they said to me, You have a white card, basically, you do whatever you feel. And for the first backstage, I did, it was in a very nice circled room, Napoleon III. I didn't really know what was what they were expecting, but I know me what I was expecting from myself. I just thought, let's do the best, you know, let's do the best that I could imagine in the time, and I have transformed this room. It's like Cendrillon. Cinderella is my favorite cartoon, Disney. I'm obsessed, I've been obsessed since I'm a kid. It was Cinderella. It was from basically Ground Zero. A miracle of palace. And so we did all the new curtains, voilage, rugs, my upholstery, carpets, all my partners have played the game because the possibility was so extraordinary. And I think what has been fantastic is they were not expecting such a thing, just to create a true house, because I brought incredible objects, and uh I think they have been so under the magic of what can be a room with extraordinary things that brings the mind at a further level, and I think they they just want to go on with this level of luxury.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Are they published in any way, these backstage rooms?

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Unfortunately, I didn't ask to take pictures, I was too shy. I did a huge mistake because that was marvelous. It's part of the magic of it. Yeah, exactly. It's part of the magic of it.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

And then also you have designed the shows for Louis Vuitton.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

They had the opportunity to do the show in these apartments of Andautriche for the show of September that was spring summer 26. And as the thematic was interior, because it was these apartments which have just been renovated, and the rooms were empty still before the Louvre reinstall everything. Nicolas and Florent Bonomano are so audacious, incredibly generous in the space they offered me, but the idea came from them. This incredible idea to redo an apartment into this apartment. Yeah. It's as you said, it's totally wild. So I collaborated with Jacques Lacoste Gallery, with Maxime Flatry, with Patrick Fourtin, with Ketabi Bourdet, who loan us an incredible console by Bob Wilson.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Wow. It was it was fabulous. It was a dream. I love this story, and having been involved from afar helping you to supply some of the pieces that were in both Nicolas Gesquier's private room and in the fashion show, to see that even behind such a major brand, you have been able to connect with people who trust you and who seemingly also let you play in the way you've described.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

I think they have been seduced by this very spontaneous way of acting, and also I think what they like is to be able to trust someone in a field that they know very well, but which is not their field of skills because their field is fashion. Even if Nicolai is an incredible collector, fabulous taste, very eclectic, he has nothing to learn from me. He can delegate and be at the same time pleased, and at the same time be surprised and excited.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

They can understand what you see in things, but then they take what they think about you and they combine it with what they feel, and they go and do their own thing. And so you can see yourself in something, but then you can also be surprised. I would love to create a set with you. It would be so fun.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

That would be a dream. I love my domain, and I love this big family we are in this world of decoration, you know, antique dealers and designers and craftsmen. But I would be so happy to reconnect to music, to theater, to literature, what I believed in so much when I was younger, you know. And to create a mix of everything I know now.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

I feel like we got everything. That was the best interview ever. You're amazing. Oh mercy. You're so good at speaking.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

You're amazing. Thank you, Marianne. Oh my god, thank you so much.