Andree Putman

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Designer We Love: Andree Putman

Website: andree putman

Quotable Quote:

"I have always cultivated the revel spirit, from my early childhood. I wanted to empty rooms. I turned down all the dictates of good taste and elitism. I avoid decoration for decoration's sake. "

Background:

Born in Paris, 1925

Wrote "Decoration" column during the 1960s for French design magazine L’oeil

Founded Ecart International in 1978, reproducing 20th century modern furnishings

Interior design work for designer shops: Yves St. Laurent, Cartier, Ebel, Azzedine Alaia, Thierry Mugler, Karl Lagerfeld

1984 interior design for Morgans hotel, the first boutique hotel, from Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell; other hotels in Cologne and Paris followed

Commercial design for movie The Pillow Book, Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art, office of Jack Lang (then-minister of culture for France)

1997 launch of her product design business, featuring furniture, fragrance, home accessories -- silver, crystal, tabletop, textiles, linens, rugs and carpets

What We Love:

Fearless curator of great, underdog design

Bringing Mellet-Stevens, Mariano Fortuny, Rene Herbst, Jean-Michel Frank, Pierre Chareau, and the sublime Eileen Gray back into the design spotlight through her reproduction business

She made merchandising couture fashionable with her sublime shop interiors

She put personal style into hospitality and helped launch the boutique hotel craze

Her mannequins for Barneys

Her classic interior design for Air France's Concorde jets

Her desire to design for a children's hospital someday

This quote: "Minimalism in interior design has become a caricature. Everywhere you find shops or hotels with an ambience that makes you feel like you are in a refrigerator."

Andree Putman Sampler:

 

 Photo Credits: Time, Amazon France, domeau & Peres, Wallpaper, Gaia & Gino, Architonic, New York Magazine

Thomas O'Brien

Designer We Love: Thomas O'Brien

Website: Aero Studios

Quotable Quote:

"I like practical and useful things as well as fine and rare things . . ."

Background:

Born in 1961 in upstate New York

Received his BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City in 1986

Founded Aero Studios in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood

Major residential design commissions, including homes for Ralph Lauren and Georgio Armani

Commercial projects include the luxe 60 Thompson Hotel in NYC

Lives in Manhattan and in Bellport, New York

What We Love:

His self-appointed label as a "shopkeeper," giving a boutique retailer's loving attention to all the details of his interiors

O'Brien's trifecta of home emporium, interior design service, and commercial design production makes Aero Studio a hive of industrious activity

The Target Vintage Modern Collection -- a clever expansion by the retailer into mass-merchandising of this designer's classic takes on mid-century modernism

O'Brien's coinage of his style as "warm modernism"

The designer's home decorating advice and common sense: "Don't get stuck into buying things for your home with the idea, 'It's not me.' Of course it's not you. It's a chair!"

Thomas O'Brien Sampler:

Photo Credits: Safavieh, Luxury Life and Style, Discount Fabric Resources, Outblush, katiedid, Shakadoo