Paris-based designer India Mahdavi is best known for her way with colour: from Ladurée’s boutiques in various shades of acid and deep greens to the all-pink Gallery restaurant at Sketch (said to be the most Instagrammed interior in London, it helped create the trend for millennial pink), Mahdavi has a gift for eye-popping palettes. Now, a new monograph, released during Milan Design Week, explores her vibrant canon.
India Mahdavi: the monograph
The monograph is filled with project photographs, such as this interior of Ladurée Beverly Hills, 2017 (top, courtesy India Mahdavi) as well as preparatory work, such as these sketches for the project
It’s 20 years since Mahdavi founded her studio, so this long-overdue publication is packed with an entire career’s worth of creations. And we’re lucky the interior design book has finally been published: it seems only the recent enforced lockdown allowed the designer the time to complete it.
Mahdavi, who trained at Paris’ Beaux-Arts and worked for Christian Liaigre before setting up her own studio after the birth of her son, has barely stopped for two decades, as this retrospective makes clear.
There have been hotel designs in Mexico and Monte-Carlo, private cinemas and residences, and restaurants in New York and Paris. She’s also opened three spaces of her own – a showroom, a boutique and a gallery – near her office on Rue Las Cases, from where she has launched designs including elegant blown-glass lamps, Mickey-shaped rattan masks, and her iconic ‘Bishop’ stools, the last now part of the collection of Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris.
‘If there is a common denominator to all my projects, it is the necessity of creating a sense of joy, a joie de vivre that I like to convey by using the primary colours of my emotions’
India Mahdavi
Making colours sing is only part of Mahdavi’s approach: ‘I have always practised interior design at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as scenography, film, decor, furniture, and product design, exploring as many opportunities that were given to me to design, decorate, remodel, or reveal a space, creating new experiences, embellishing life,’ she writes in the book’s introduction.
Top, Mahdavi’s interior for Gallery restaurant at Sketch in London, 2014 (courtesy India Mahdavi) and, above, her moodboard
‘But if there is a common denominator to all my projects, it is the necessity of creating a sense of joy, a joie de vivre that I like to convey by using the primary colours of my emotions to listen, to understand, to feel, to respond to an environment,’ she continues.
It’s this joie de vivre that makes her output so special. And the source for this vision and passion for all things colourful might be found in Madhavi’s countries of origin, Iran and Egypt, as well as her peripatetic childhood, which saw her move to the US, Germany and France. Certainly, the boldness of light and the pastel colours of the Mediterranean, where she lived as a child, seep through her work (coincidentally, many of her projects are based in the region).
Among Mahdavi’s takes on her ‘Bishop’ stool.
As well as a detailed interview by Javier F Contreras, dean of the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD in Geneva, the monograph includes a booklet of Mahdavi’s photographs, capturing details, patterns, colours and more from her travels around the world.
Art-directed by Studio Achermann, the volume also comes with a bespoke patterned slipcase. Its cover features the designer’s profile and dots in a variety of shades, including periwinkle blue. Perhaps the new colour of the decade? Mahdavi will know.
Top, interior of Germain bistro in Paris, 2009 (courtesy India Mahdavi), and, above, Mahdavi’s sketches and chair design
INFORMATION
India Mahdavi, Chronicle Books, $65, £50, €58
-
For its latest runway show, Zegna creates a serene oasis in DubaiThe Italian fashion house took over the Dubai Opera for a S/S 2026 show that proposed a lived-in elegance, drawing inspiration from Dubai’s sunbaked landscapes and Zegna’s birthplace of Trivero
-
Time-travel to the golden age of the cruise ship at Sea Containers LondonThe South Bank hotel celebrates its tenth anniversary with four new suites inspired by period cabin design, from Edwardian elegance to 1980s glamour
-
A Karuizawa house is a soothing, work-from-home retreat in JapanTakeshi Hirobe Architects play with scale and space, creating a tranquil residence in which to live and work
-
This Coimbatore home exemplifies the ‘modern Indian’ aestheticA spiritual pooja room and local artefacts meet European furniture and offbeat design at this intriguing residence in south India, which is the focus of Wallpaper’s interiors series, The Inside Story
-
Lasvit brought forest, fabric and frozen light to Euroluce 2025Czech glassmaker Lasvit’s 2025 lighting launches look to nature for inspiration and reflection
-
Conie Vallese and Super Yaya’s beribboned bronze furniture is dressed to impressTucked away on the top floor of Villa Bagatti during Milan Design Week 2025, artist Conie Vallese and fashion designer Rym Beydoun of Super Yaya unveiled bronze furniture pieces, softened with hand-dyed ribbons in pastel hues
-
Geoffrey Bawa’s furniture designs are revived – a tropical modernist treatBangalore studio Phantom Hands cultivates the furniture legacy of Sri Lankan tropical modernist pioneer Geoffrey Bawa
-
Tectonic modernity makes for fine dining furniture from KnollThe new ‘Muecke Wood Collection’ by architect Jonathan Muecke for Knoll brings artistry to the table
-
Elegance personified, the 'Riley' sofa is a handsome beastA new sofa by Hannes Peer for Minotti has us swooning, not slouching
-
At Milan Design Week 2025, Turri launches a circular dining table fit for ceremonial feastsThe new ‘Kenobi’ by Marco Acerbis for Turri is the kind of dining table we like to get around
-
All hail Jil Sander’s first foray into furnitureAt Milan Design Week, the venerated fashion designer unveils a respectful take on a tubular furniture classic for Thonet
