By design - ELIZABETH GAROUSTE

The established, influential French designer Elizabeth Garouste says without hesitation that she likes the label given to her and the Swiss-born designer Mattia Bonetti, who she met in the late 1970s. “I really like the term New Barbarian,” she says. “Together we made our first collection inspired by the primitive world; the furniture was made of animal skin and rocks, including a chair that we called the Barbarian Chair (1981).”

The pair’s bold new vision for design – which drew upon the Venetian baroque, the Middle Ages and Neo-Classicism – radically re-thought “the forms and uses of furniture, but re-styled it for a knowing and urbane audience in a period dominated by post-modernist irony and symbolism,” says a statement on the Victoria & Albert Museum website.

Garouste studied interior design at the École Camondo in Paris; after college, she spent the 1970s designing footwear at Tilbury, her parents’ shoe company, and also created theatre sets. Garouste and Bonetti’s partnership began in earnest when the pair jointly created the décor for the legendary Parisian club Le Privilège in 1980, adorning the walls with primitive art-inspired pieces.

“After working for 10 years in fashion, more specifically shoes, Le Privilège was my first [interior] design project that I carried out with my husband Gérard Garouste,” she says. In 2002, she stopped working with Bonetti; today, her personal artistic practice is a priority.

“I like switching from a world that is very functional to [the world of] drawings, and sculptures in metal or papier mâché, enabling me to have even more freedom,” she says. Crucially, Garouste underwent something of a renaissance last year with a show of critically acclaimed works at Ralph Pucci Gallery in New York, including an off-the-wall wrought iron swing chair (edition of 25).

“It was a real shame because I was not able to be [there] because of Covid-19, but I think it’s been fairly successful because I received a lot of orders. The collection is made in an artisanal and fanciful style, mixing bronze, wrought iron, lacquer, ceramics, mosaic, and gold leaf,” Garouste explains. She reveals that she is also transforming a Christian Louboutin boutique in Paris and preparing a new collection for Ralph Pucci gallery in Los Angeles and Avant-Scène gallery in Paris.