She needs colors like the air she breathes, and that is India Mahdavi's great strength. The designer, who was born in Tehran, to a Persian father and an English-Egyptian mother, defines herself “as polyglot and polychromatic.” She lives in Paris, but previously lived in Cambridge (Massachusetts), Heidelberg, Vence and New York. “I am a nomad at heart and I believe that happiness is closely related to an open and cosmopolitan mind. All my life I have tried to abolish the borders between nationalities, disciplines, scales and accesses. Being a nomad is adopting a state of mind in which flexibility and freedom prevail. We adapt, overcome and metabolize,” she explains to Magazine.
His maternal grandmother wore haute couture, smoked cigars and was probably the first woman in Egypt to drive and play golf. She was quite the Cairo socialite; Her granddaughter has also broken rules. The interiors designed by her use at least five shades and often reach ten. For her, they are not a mere element that makes up a composition: they are a language. “Working with color has always been something natural for me. It is a very instinctive form of expression, it is about connecting with my own emotions and perception. Colors are like words. Each association generates a different meaning: I often talk about colors as an alphabet, a grammar that can be assembled to form poetry. It is also a way of searching for a vibration, of searching for light. Colors are my expression to celebrate joy.”
His polyglot grammar is built with many languages, many cultural experiences and a lot of longing for the Disney movies of his childhood in Massachusetts: “My countries of origin, Iran and Egypt, have always fueled my imagination and subsequently the final result of my projects, never forgetting the memories of my American childhood. “They reflect the nostalgia of another place that has always been part of me.”
From those memories, the Talisman table was born, for the Louis Vuitton Nomadic Objects collection. “When I designed it, I thought about revisiting those famous oriental side tables that appeared for tea and disappeared for a nap. Conceived as a large book and based on the theme of chance, it is both a symbol of the East, of a tradition of hospitality to which I am attached, and a nomadic object, because it can move. It is a free object,” explains the designer and architect.
Given the name she chose for the table, there is no other choice but to ask her if she is superstitious. She acknowledges that “at home or in my studio, in my car or in my house in Arles, I always have a nazar, the blue eye against the evil eye.” The leather-inlaid iris on the table top relates to all the Middle Eastern stories and fables that I love to read, like those of The Arabian Nights, or those of Nasreddin, the humorous 11th century Sufi philosopher,” relates.
Her use of color abducts, “but people forget that I am above all an architect. I design structured spaces in which flow and circulation are as important as the visual. I conceive them to experience a joyful and memorable moment.”
She surprises, but what surprises her? “Whether in Rome, at the Villa Medici, where I was commissioned to renovate the main floor, or at the National Gallery Victoria in Melbourne, where I was invited to talk with Pierre Bonnard through an extensive retrospective of his work. Being able to design such a variety of projects and not knowing what will come next allows me to explore my creativity and surprise myself.
He admires Ettore Sottsass, “who uses this joy with graphic and chromatic codes that I can identify with. And, of course, there are the pioneering women of design such as Eileen Grey, Charlotte Perriand and Andrée Putman. They remain important figures for me to this day.”
And she, who has dressed her interior designs from Almodóvar films, has a dream to fulfill: “When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a filmmaker and I spent a year going to the cinema three times a day. The fantasy of being a director still inspires me. When I start a project, the narrative comes first. There is the script and then the set. “This is how I try to practice my profession, like a film director.”
