A Season of Objects and Obsession in Saint Germain
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estled in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Hôtel de Maisons hosted Design Miami.Paris’s third edition in October 2025. This invite-only fair transformed the 18th-century mansion (once home to aristocrats and Karl Lagerfeld) into a salon of collectible design. Over five days, galleries showcased objets d’art spanning eras: from revered French ceramics and Modernist classics to playful contemporary installations. For Paris’s cognoscenti, it was an encounter of old and new – opulent historic rooms opened onto bold new visions of luxury and craft.
Animal Instincts & Whimsy
Curators also embraced whimsy: the fair had a pronounced focus on zoomorphic forms. Parisian galleries Gastou and Desprez-Bréhéret partnered on an “Early Birds” theme, while Galerie Mitterrand invoked its Lalanne legacy with topiary tortoises and bronze hares in the hôtel’s gardens.
Outside, Vikram Goyal’s immersive installation The Soul Garden (with scent artist Sissel Tolaas) reimagined India’s Panchatantra fables in burnished brass. Each sculpted creature concealed a tiny engraved fable and an embedded scent, inviting visitors into a meditative parable of coexistence.
Art Deco Reimagined
In the centennial year of Paris’s 1925 Art Deco exposition, exhibitors revisited the interwar era. Galerie Maxime Flatry (Paris) displayed precious vases and plates by Besnard, Chaplet and Dalpayrat (c. 1890–1930) against bespoke floral backdrops. These rare ceramic works – emblematic of bold innovation in their time – lent historic gravitas to the fair. Nearby, Galerie Chastel-Maréchal unveiled Jean Dunand’s famed 1929 lacquer-and-silver screen Forêt, depicting gilded stags and birds in a silvered forest – a treasure from Princess Marie Bonaparte’s collection.
Small Wonders and Modernist Marvels
Minor scale, major impact: the fair put diminutive craftsmanship in the spotlight. In its Paris debut, Patrick Parrish Studio (New York) paid homage to Vienna’s Auböck lineage by displaying 150 brass and copper objets – bells, bowls, baskets and bookends – elevating these everyday forms into prescient objets d’art.
Brussels-based Yves Macaux Gallery offered restraint with a Josef Hoffmann silver cutlery set and an Adolf Loos clock, juxtaposing Wiener Werkstätte exuberance with minimalist sophistication.
Paris’s Galerie MiniMasterpiece returned with jewel-like new creations inspired by contemporary artists, while Galerie Downtown François Laffanour highlighted modernist icons. Even the Best Historic Work award spoke to lineage: it went to Jean Prouvé’s 1951 bureau and table – modernist classics that repurposed industrial materials in soothing green hues.
The Next Generation
The fair also signaled its eyes on the future. Design Miami teamed with Apple to unveil the inaugural “Designers of Tomorrow” program, an iPad-powered showcase of four emerging talents from Shanghai, California, Paris and London. Each designer demonstrated how digital tools can enrich the creative process. Likewise, champagne house Perrier-Jouët presented a “Design for Nature” Award, inviting creators to tackle sustainability as a creative imperative. These initiatives showed that while Design Miami.Paris is steeped in history, it remains a launchpad for tomorrow’s visionaries.
Paulin’s La Déclive
Among the fair’s special projects was a grand homage to mid century creativity. Paris’s atelier Paulin, Paulin, Paulin resurrected Pierre Paulin’s La Déclive, a modular 1966 seating concept that treated the floor itself as furniture. For this exhibition, La Déclive was reimagined on a monumental scale: carpet became cushions and chaise longues, literally blending architecture with seating. Visitors could lounge on the design itself, experiencing Paulin’s radical vision of inhabitable space – the floor itself became the furniture.
A Tapestry of Tradition and Innovation
When the fair closed, its third edition had clearly affirmed Design Miami.Paris’s prestige among high-society collectors and patrons. Here, the aura of Parisian heritage – from Lagerfeld’s former salon to the grand salons of the 1920s – mingled with cutting-edge creativity. Sophisticated guests roamed between Modernist icons and avant-garde experiments, reassured by the fair’s scholarly curation and exclusivity. Even the awards ceremony spoke to this ethos: winners received bespoke crystal trophies by Maison Daum, each a micro-sculpture reflecting the fair’s ethos of form-meets-art. In short, Design Miami.Paris 2025 was a celebration of cultural prestige – a salon where history, craft and imagination converge for those who value the art of collecting.
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