Who were Les Lalanne? A guide to the world's most collectible duo

When François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar—a copper, nickel silver and brass sculpture in the shape of a hippo—sold for $31.4 million in December 2025, it became the most expensive design object ever auctioned. However, that record was eclipsed shortly after by a set of 15 mirrors created by none other than the sculptor’s wife, Claude Lalanne. The Sotheby’s New York sale on 22 April, from the private collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg, fetched $33.5 million – a new world record for a piece of design. Works by the late couple –collectively referred to Les Lalanne, though they largely practised individually – brought in a total $64.7 million at the sale.

‘The appeal of Les Lalanne has become truly universal,’ Sotheby’s chairman of 20th-century design, Jodi Pollack, tells Wallpaper*. ‘With a strong and established collector base, combined with new buyers entering the market, there is a powerful momentum that continues to drive demand.’

The couple enjoyed successful parallel careers during their lifetimes, and became fashion world darlings, collaborating with several celebrated designers and ateliers on commissions for store interiors and private homes. Their individual works are markedly different, but share common themes rooted in surrealism and references to the natural world. These pieces particularly shone in the 1970s, as interest in organic forms followed the space-age modernism that dominated the previous decade.

Today, as Les Lalanne continue to break their own records in the design category, we delve further into their careers and impact.

Who were Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne?

French sculptor and designer Claude Dupeux was born in Paris in 1924, and formally trained at the École des Arts Décoratifs in the city before continuing with architectural studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, also in Paris. Simultaneously, she honed her artistic vision through drawing classes at the Atelier de la Grande Chaumière, where she also discovered her passion for sculpture. Claude met her future husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, at an exhibition of his work in 1952. Born in Agen, France in 1927, he initially trained as a painter at Paris’s Julian Academy.

François-Xavier rented a studio in the Impasse Ronsin, an artists’ enclave in Montparnasse. His neighbour was Constantin Brancusi, who introduced him to Surrealists including Man Ray and Max Ernst. The artist also worked as a guard at the Louvre, where his study of Egyptian artefacts would go on to influence his animal-inspired sculptural work.

Soon after meeting, Claude and François-Xavier moved in together and became creative partners. The couple’s first joint exhibition, 'Zoophites,' opened in 1964 at Jeanine Restany’s Galerie J in Paris and presented a collection of hybrid sculptural-functional objects. The show won the attention of Alexander Iolas, a Greek art dealer and collector who introduced American audiences to Surrealism. In October 1966, when Iolas exhibited the couple’s works in his Paris gallery, they first used the shared moniker ‘Les Lalanne.’ Claude and François-Xavier married a year later, and both enjoyed a long and fruitful career.

After François-Xavier’s death in 2008, Claude continued to work from the house in Ury, France, just south of Paris, that they had shared for over five decades. When she died in April 2019 at the age of 94, French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, released a statement of condolences, speaking of how the couple kneaded together ‘imagination, humour and poetry’ to create works that ‘re-enchant the familiar and the functional.’

What characterises their work?

Together, the work of Les Lalanne forms a diverse oeuvre of functional sculpture, or sculptural furniture, depending on how you look at it. The duo often worked together, though maintained their distinct styles and rarely collaborated on individual pieces. François-Xavier’s creations were more often inspired by the animal kingdom while Claude favoured the botanical. They were, however, united in their love for historic French craftsmanship, the surreal and the humour they brought to their fine and decorative art.

François-Xavier’s first private commission, in 1965, was a sculptural brass bar for the home of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, which featured two tiers that incorporate an ovoid bottle-rack and a horn-shaped shaker. The piece sold for $3.2 million at a Christie’s auction of the couple’s collection in 2009, nine times its initial value.

François-Xavier is perhaps best known for his sheep sculptures, the Moutons de Laine, a flock created in 1968 on the request of art dealer Alexander Iolas as a wedding present to the artist Bill Copley. Originally titled Pour Polypheme, based on the passage in Homer's Odyssey where Ulysses and his comrades escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus by hiding underneath his giant sheep, the 24 shearling-wrapped pieces with painted-aluminium faces and feet can be used as stools. Several were later acquired by Saint Laurent and Bergé. Meanwhile, François-Xavier’s Hippopotame Bar was commissioned by Anne Schlumberger in 1976, while a fish-shaped Grand Carpe bar (1972) and the Rhinocrétaire I cabinet (1964) also feature in his zoomorphic collection.

Claude, on the other hand, would often take natural forms such as leaves or flowers, and electroplate them in copper sulphate, making the copper cling to the organic material to create perfect replicas. The recently-auctioned collection of elaborate mirrors perfectly demonstrates the delicate floral details for which she is renowned. These were also created for Saint Laurent, with whom Claude also collaborated on gilt metal castings from the body of supermodel Verushka that were incorporated into the fashion designer’s 1969 Empreintes collection.

In addition to working with Saint Laurent, Claude was commissioned by Hubert de Givenchy, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, John Galliano and Reed Krakoff, among others. Her most famous works include Choupatte, a series of cabbage-shaped vessels supported on chicken-like feet; the Croco range of crocodile-informed tables and chairs; and the surreal L’Homme à Tête de Chou (1976) sculpture that inspired the title and cover of an album by Serge Gainsbourg.

Les Lalanne’s legacy continues to resonate in the fashion world, with pieces being installed in Chanel, Dior and Tom Ford flagship stores. Prominent collectors include interior designer Peter Marino, who placed François-Xavier’s sculptures across Chanel’s fine jewellery shops, as well as many other private collectors.

'What I find especially compelling is the way Les Lalanne engages with other works in a collection, subtly shifting the dialogue in a way that always feels fresh and unexpected,' says Pollack, of Sotheby's.

Why is the work of Les Lalanne so valuable?

In recent years, Les Lalanne have been the subject of several major exhibitions, including a retrospective at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Their work appears in major collections including the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The recent attention on their careers has arrived perfectly at a time when interest in collectible design, and a wider appreciation for exquisite crafts, have skyrocketed. The couple’s connections to the luxury fashion world has further elevated their allure.

‘Over the past two years, we’ve seen new pricing benchmarks achieved at auction for both Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, across both unique and editioned works,’ Pollack explains. ‘Demand remains exceptionally strong and continues to drive the market forward. At the same time, this momentum is bringing some of the artists’ most celebrated works back to market.’

Along with a strong market for design in general, the recent auction records for Les Lalanne prove that collectors are not only interested in the works’ value – they’re also looking for pieces that are beautifully-crafted, highly whimsical, and don’t take themselves too seriously. Pollack, who has a François-Xavier-designed Mouton de Laine in her office, concludes: ‘We all need a little Lalanne in our lives, especially in a world that rarely pauses for breath.’