If you’ve ever strolled through Paris’s public gardens, you may well have stopped to take a seat on its outdoor furniture: green chairs and loungers scattered around fountains and flower beds. Any time the sun comes out, residents and tourists quickly take to the park, where patio furniture is arranged around a table for a group picnic or under a tree for a quiet nap in the shade. On a sunny day it can be difficult to find a free seat – they’re all taken by sunbathers.

Along with the Wallace drinking fountains, the rattan chairs lining café terraces or the iconic dark-green kiosks commissioned by Baron Haussmann in the mid-19th century, the chairs found in Parisian parks and gardens have become a symbol of the city. The sturdy, stylish outdoor furniture, which subliminally transmits a sense of Paris to millions of visitors, comes from a few trusted companies. One of the biggest suppliers is French manufacturer Fermob, whose chairs can be found in the Luxembourg Gardens, as well as on café terraces, squares and the banks of the Seine.

The idea to add lounge chairs to the Luxembourg Gardens was first proposed in 1843 by the French senate, which is housed in the Luxembourg Palace and still owns the green space and its tennis courts. It took until the 1920s for the first collection of chairs, made by the craftspeople at city hall’s Ateliers de la Ville de Paris, to arrive. In the 1990s, Fermob won a competition to produce a modern version and, in 2004, the company called on French designer Frédéric Sofia to redesign the seats in aluminium, making them lighter, more comfortable and easily collected and stacked.

The resulting sage-green “Luxembourg” collection (originally named Sénat) has since become synonymous with the Parisian park. “Our furniture creates a sense of connection,” says Fermob’s chairman, Bernard Reybier. “It’s recognisable and part of daily life and makes people feel that they are in a very Parisian setting. The idea is that you are part of the history of the city.”

Founded in 1890 in Thoissey by a family of blacksmiths, Fermob takes its name from the words fer (“iron”) and mobilier (“furniture”). It remained a small workshop until it was acquired in 1989 by Reybier, who oversaw the growth of the company and expanded its appeal by collaborating with designers such as Pascal Mourgue, Andrée Putman and Matali Crasset. Today the business has expanded greatly but all of its manufacturing still takes place in the Ain region north of Lyon.

Despite its production beyond the city, Fermob’s relationship will always be close with Paris – and it’s continuing to evolve. Last year the firm began furnishing another Parisian landmark, the Champs-Elysées, as part of a project to transform the avenue into a pedestrian-friendly garden by 2030. The Committee for the Champs-Élysées asked Fermob, along with other bistro-furniture manufacturers, to design a new chair for its café and restaurant terraces. “What people like best is a product that has both a good design and a history to go with it,” says Reybier. “The Champs-Élysées is a new story and we will see where it takes us. Maybe it will also become representative of the Parisian identity.”

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