Saint Laurent’s Strikingly Modernist and Minimal Vision for Furniture Takes the Spotlight in a Two-Part Exhibition in Los Angeles and Paris

Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello doesn’t just take the chic and minimal route for his fashions. The “French Modernists” furniture exhibition opens today at the brand’s Paris and Los Angeles Rive Droite outposts, which also serves as galleries and incubators for the creative director’s passions (he regularly stocks them with high-end vintage furniture and artworks he curates, as well as informing the décor of worldwide boutiques).

The exhibition, which coincides with this week’s PAD Paris design fair, predominantly showcases the titan of the movement, Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941). Frank specialized in hyper-luxurious, maximalist style of minimalism. As an interior designer he helmed Elsa Schiaperlli’s Paris apartment and had his work documented by Man Ray. noted “the rooms of his clients embraced the glitter of Boulle as well as the glamour of the silver screen.” Frank, who also developed the ubiquitous Parsons table, has been long intertwined with the maison. Its founder Yves Saint Laurent and his life and business partner Pierre Berge’ were avid collectors whose interest in the 60s and 70s helped reignite a Frank renaissance. Their benchmark 2009 Christie’s auction featured items such as an exquisite mica veneered low table which went for 319,000 E.

Vaccarello also selected works by architect and designer Jacques Adnet and the jeweler and smith Jean-Després who wielded hammered metal to play with light and reflection in his works. Saint Laurent collaborated with Galerie Chastel Marécha, Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, and Galerie Jacques Lacoste. in a statement, the brand touts, “Although designed almost a century ago, the exhibition highlights the striking modernism and contemporaneity of the work of the three designers.”