At this point it can’t be a secret that we simply adore chairs and our rich portfolio is the most relevant proof for our love of variety when it comes to styles and colors. Also, we’ve already told you on several occasions that we’re always looking for additions to our portfolio and our main criteria is the balance between quality, price and aesthetics. But something we might have not mentioned so far is that we also try to include similar models to the ones that marked history in the world of design.
Actually, we already told you about Arne Jacobsen’s heritage and his wonderful Dot, Egg, Ant and so on. Well, our next name on our list of great appreciations is Philippe Starck and, even if he was and still is a very prolific designer, we believe that (at least for the moment) his greatest masterpiece is the Louis Ghost chair.
Philippe Starck started his career under the patronage of Pierre Cardin who was so impressed with the young designer’s potential that he offered him the artistic director position of his publishing house. Then, in 1983, at only 34, he became more famous once he was given the opportunity to refurbish France’s president at that time, François Mitterrand, at the recommendation of the Minister of Culture, Jack Lang. 1984 was also a great year for Starck and he gained more popularity thanks to his design for Café Costes. After that there were dozens of creations from very different fields: architecture, furniture, decorations, appliances, clothes, accessories, glassware, graphics and even boats. The common thread for most of these could be summed up into two major concepts: “democratic design” and “democratic ecology”, meaning a certain care for the environment and the desire to create products not only for the upper class, but for everyone else and this, in turn, meant high volume productions and accessible materials (plastics).
To some extent, the Louis Ghost was born as a consequence of Starck’s love for the democratic design and it was a reinterpretation of a classic chair, sophisticated and high-class, made of solid wood and ornamented with luxurious upholstery. But the courage of transforming something belonging to royalty into a modern object made of a contemporary material, and even with keeping the elegant curved lines of the reference, was certainly the mark of Starck’s genius. Practically, “Louie’s Ghost” was created in 2002 for Kartell and it’s a single piece chair obtained from injection-molded transparent polycarbonate:
Of course, a chair that has already been sold by the millions served as inspiration for other designers and we can easily think of at least two similar models even from our portfolio:
– SM 261B:
– SM 255:
