In conversation with Dan Thawley, creative director of Matter and Shape
Design salon Matter and Shape aims to reach fresh audiences by building bridges with the fashion world, which is why it overlaps with Paris Fashion Week.
The design industry doesn’t usually have the pop-cultural power of fashion. You are unlikely to find the names of the best sofa, chair or glassware designers plastered across billboards or making headlines in weekend supplements after the Academy Awards. And that’s perhaps understandable: fashion seems more accessible because it feels more personal – our clothes are a big part of how we present ourselves to the world, an expression of who we are. It makes sense that the industry gets priority in terms of coverage and interest. But according to Dan Thawley, things are changing. “There has never been so much interest in design,” says the Paris-based artistic director. “If I had done this interview 10 years ago, I probably would have said to you that fashion has never been more fashionable. Now that’s true of design.”
Monocle is speaking to Thawley following the second edition of Matter and Shape, an annual design salon for which Thawley is artistic director. The event, which coincides with Paris Fashion Week every March, is the brainchild of Matthieu Pinet, who established the brand as an online design platform before deciding to turn it into a physical event with Thawley’s assistance. “The idea was to create something that would disrupt Fashion Week a little bit and make people question why, where and when they show projects related to design,” says Thawley of the salon’s 2024 debut. “We didn’t want to graft Matter and Shape onto existing design world events but rather to reach new audiences and think about people that don’t have the opportunity to be [at those design events].”
The initial fair featured 32 exhibitors and hosted a Jil Sander-backed series of design talks (which returned again this year). By the second edition, it had grown to host 60 exhibitors, with 8,000 visitors perusing works from a mix of emerging and established names, including Italian rug company Cc-Tapis, Bovezzo-based lighting firm Flos and Switzerland’s Vitra. “I want to tap into customers who are interested in both fashion and design,” says Abid Javed, founder of Objets Mito, an emerging London-based design studio that showed at this year’s salon. “There’s a nice crossover of sensibilities.”
It was a crowd that also appealed to David Mahyari, the founder of Dutch natural stone company SolidNature. “Everybody was there – all of the architects and designers. And so was the fashion crowd, with all of the big names for Fashion Week,” Mahyari tells Monocle. “Paris makes sense as a place for this element of design to come together with fashion.”
Indeed, as Monocle wandered the halls of this year’s event, there were Italian greyhounds strutting about alongside young women perusing the salon in groups. It was a different demographic to those typically found at design fairs (there were very few old Italian men in suits and ties, for starters), with people clearly flitting between attending runway shows and walking around the salon.
“It often feels as though designers and design brands are always speaking to the same people,” says Thawley. “What I enjoy about Matter and Shape is walking through it with a person who I respect but isn’t a design expert and hearing them say, ‘Oh, I really like that!’ and ‘Tell me more about this.’ There might be an aestheticised public that is attuned to fashion and culture but there’s still a long way to go when it comes to design.”
Matter and Shape is on course to changing that narrative – and, at the very least, it’s giving design some pop-cultural relevance during Fashion Week.
matterandshape.com
