No Place LikeHOME

New homewares from Louis Vuitton fuse function and fashion

Kia D. Goosby

Vanities /Design

"A CHAIR IS still a chair, even when there's no one sitting there," Dionne Warwick first crooned more than six decades ago. "But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home, when there's no one there to hold you tight." This year, Louis Vuitton is offering a mighty assemblage of stylish decor that will make your house a home—including chairs you might just fall in love with.

The Louis Vuitton Home Collections span five categories: the newly inaugurated Signature Collection of furniture and lighting, which joins tableware, decoration, exceptional gaming, and the brand's celebrated Objets Nomades. For the latter, since 2012, the French luxury goods and fashion purveyor has collaborated with designers worldwide, like Estudio Campana and Patricia Urquiola, to concoct limitededition creations ranging from a lounge chair made from carbon fiber and lined with soft leather to a stool that folds into a compact shape reminiscent of a handbag. This year, LV tapped French designer Patrick Jouin and Argentine designer Cristian Mohaded, among others, to reinvent the house's heritage codes and design the Signature Collection.

The collection made its debut at this year's Salone del Mobile, Milan's annual design fair, "it's not only about objects," Jouin told VF of his approach, "because objects are, of course, very important—but what is a house? What is the lifestyle?" It's about the objects in situ, he said, about what they'll mean in the lives of their owners as set pieces around which to gather with family and friends, "it's about the whole ambiance, the whole mood, and an object can be important, but [these pieces], they really set a very important tone."

One of his creations does just that. He conceived of the Lagoon—a modular sofa that strikes a balance between fluidity and structure with its deep, comfortable seats— as a functional piece of art that can be produced in various textures and colors. "The idea is to have a sofa which is very nice to look at from the back, because sometimes they are a little bit boring," Jouin said. "Something which really has a silhouette, like in fashion."

For Mohaded, his background served as inspiration. "I don't pretend to be European. I'm a designer, I'm Argentinean, I am from Latin America, I have a different vision, I have a different school of design," he said. The design of a wool rug, for instance, riffs on the chacana. The symbol, known as the Andean cross and representing the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, is dispersed in a gradient that brings to mind Vuitton's famous Damier checkerboard pattern. "I'm totally passionate about craft. This is a mix between the heritage of Louis Vuitton and my story," Mohaded added.

Highlights from the Home Collections are permanently on view at the Via Montenapoleone store in Milan, the brand's first to dedicate an entire floor to design. There, shoppers may enjoy the opportunity to closely examine the pieces, among them a totem turntable and sound system and a signature hanging Cocoon—because at Vuitton, a chair is never just a chair.