A ubiquitous name in the world of contemporary architecture and design, Philippe Starck has created everything from hotel interiors and luxury yachts to toothbrushes and teakettles. Yet for every project in his diverse portfolio, Starck has maintained an instantly recognizable signature style: a look that is dynamic, sleek, fluid and witty. The son of an aircraft engineer, Starck studied interior design at the École Nissim de Camondo in Paris. He started his design career in the 1970s decorating nightclubs in the city, and his reputation for spirited and original interiors earned him a commission in 1983 from French president François Mitterrand to design the private apartments of the Élysée Palace. Starck made his name internationally in 1988 with his design for the interiors of the Royalton Hotel in New York, a strikingly novel environment featuring jewel-toned carpeting and upholstery and furnishings with organically shaped cast-aluminum frames. He followed that up in 1990 with an equally impressive redesign of the Paramount Hotel in Manhattan, a project that featured over-scaled furniture as well as headboards that mimicked Old Masters paintings.
Like their designer, furniture pieces by Starck seem to enjoy attention. Designs such as the wedge-shaped J Series club chair; the sweeping molded-mahogany Costes chair; or the sinuous WW stool never fail to raise eyebrows. Other Starck pieces make winking postmodern references to historical designs. His polycarbonate Louis Ghost armchair puts a new twist on Louis XVI furniture; his Out-In chair offers a futuristic take on the classic English high-back chair. But for all his flair, Starck maintains a populist vision of design. While one of his limited-edition Prince de Fribourg et Treyer armchairs might be priced at $7,000, a plastic Starck chair for the Italian firm Kartell is available for around $250. As you will see on these pages, Philippe Starck’s furniture makes a bold statement — and it can add a welcome bit of humor to even the most traditional decor.You are about to tab into a category hierarchy listAdd my Shop to your Favourites and receive my email newsletters about new items and special promotions!
Last post we alluded to another update we've made in our dining room. As you can see, we finally got new chairs for the space — oh only 9 months after moving into the house. With all the food and entertaining we take on, you might think the dining room would have been our top priority. Well all we can say is, we're getting there slowly! We've always loved the industrial look and feel of metal paired with barn wood, so we knew we wanted something metal to go with our farm dining table. For years we've looked at and considered the Tolix style french cafe chairs, though admittedly, we weren't in love with the idea of the sticker shock the authentic versions might bring us. We've searched high and low for vintage Tolix chairs on Craigslist, Etsy, Ebay, and other online auction type sites. For example, we'd eyed and drooled over authentic but modern versions like these from Pottery Barn with a whopping price of $245 per chair: And just loved the idea of authentic vintage versions like these that can be found all over Ebay and other auction sites to the tune of $350 or more per chair:
Every so often some amazing vintage Tolix chairs will creep up in Etsy's Vintage section too, like these, for almost $800 for the pair: Just once I'd love to be ahead of the design curve on gems like these. Back in the day, these french cafe chairs were probably a dime a dozen and you might have been laughed at for wanting something like this prominently in your home. It always happens that way, doesn't it!? Maybe we need to re-think holding onto and storing those folding chairs Mary's dad lent us that we were smack talking in our last post, ha. But that magical moment where we found a steal on the real deal didn't arrive before we laid our eyes on the prize with the chairs we did end up getting (which we think look pretty similar).This was one of those instances where the coupon queen tendencies passed down to Mary from her mother and sister came into play. Since we'd been eyeing this style of chair for so long, she had signed up for various site emails where we get alerts on sales and coupons.
Somehow (don't ask me how), Mary was able to stack a sitewide sale, and email percentage coupon and a free shipping offer all at once to snag all 8 of these chairs for right at $40 a pop. We're not always frugal in every part of our lives, but again this is one of those circumstances where I love the thriftiness that can come out of my woman! Mary here: Like Tim alluded to, anyone can do this. If you have a favorite brand/store/item and a little patience, simply sign up for the company emails. They send out offers and promo codes every so often that you can take advantage of. It just so happened with these chairs that we hit the sweet spot when Overstock was already having a site sale on them, and also sent me a discount coupon via email, along with a separate free shipping offer — It. Was. While the chairs we got aren't authentic French Tolix cafe chairs, we love the industrial vibe they give off and were even a little surprised at how comfortable they are to sit in. We love how the 8 chairs fit perfectly around the table as is and can be moved to either side when we put leaves in the table for when we have lots of people over.
My mother has been adamant that Mary and I will be having Christmas dinner at our house from now on (something she's hosted for as long as I can remember) so we love knowing we will have enough wiggle room. The chairs also stack perfectly against one another for easy transport if we need more space in the room or just want to move them around. Who knows if we'll ever actually stack these chairs, but we like the feature in any case. Here's the part in the post where I show a ton of shots of the chairs I tried to get from every angle: Funny Note — While I was trying to get some decent shots of the new chairs all set up in the space, you know who thought it was the perfect time to try to get me to play ball with him. He quite literally almost made it into every single shot I tried to get. So, shall we take another look at our awesome new chairs while Basil photo-bombs each shot? The challenge was finding any good shots that he hadn't photo-bombed. What a ham — a big puppy ham.