In addition to her unique taste, India Mahdavi's superpower is her keen sense of what's in the air. The aesthetic value that he leaves behind after the completion of each of his works is unquestionable, yet it can be appreciated not only by design fanatics with hollow ears, but also by the average person who only wants to post on social media. It's good to exist in colorful, slightly luxurious atmospheres and it's cool to immerse yourself in a fantasy world. Is it any wonder that young people love your spaces?
Mahdavi was born in Tehran in 1962, his father is Iranian and his mother is Anglo-Egyptian. He spent his childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his passion for colors began - according to his own admission, he was particularly influenced by Disney tales and Silly Melodies. The fact that he is able to create in such a cosmopolitan style is probably also due to his upbringing: in addition to the USA, he lived in Germany and France, studied at several art schools, architecture at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, furniture design at the Parsons School of Design in New York, graphics in the School of Visual Arts.
After completing his studies, he immediately returned to Paris to become the art director of Liagre, an interior design studio that also designs furnishings. He left the office in 1997 to start his own business, which today includes his own store in Paris, several showrooms, a webshop and a design office. However, even before he started his own business, he met a restaurant owner who, although on a tight budget, wanted to open an 80-room hotel (the Townhouse Hotel in Miami), which put the young designer on the map of the design world in 1999.
Designer of cool hotels and even cooler restaurants
After that, he received several commissions from all over the world, perhaps the most famous of his early works are the bar of the luxury hotel The Connaught in London and the Le Germain hotel in Paris, where he also incorporated a 5 m high, lemon-yellow, synthetic resin female figure whose legs were stuck in the hotel restaurant. while his upper body is already one floor up, shocking people sipping their drinks at the bar.
It was also a huge recognition that he was asked to design three pastry shops of the Ladurée chain, famous for its macarons. The style is knit, the iconic mint green shade and Marie Antoinette's sense of life had to appear everywhere, including in the units in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Geneva. In 2014, he was then asked to design the multi-room Sketch restaurant in London, his most famous work so far, one of the most posted hospitality units in the world on Instagram. She says: "I don't want to sound like a brag, but I've changed people's perception of pink." His more important interior design works are several suites of the luxury hotel Claridge's in London, and the interiors of the Ferrari restaurant Cavallino in Maranello. Mahdavi designed several stores: Tod's and REDValentino on one of London's elegant shopping streets, Sloane Street, but he also worked on the women's clothing department of the iconic Berlin luxury store KaDeWe.
Mahdavi also likes to collaborate
He currently has three showrooms in Paris, where his own designed and manufactured furniture can be viewed (in addition to his webshop), but he is also often asked to collaborate: he has already designed chairs for Dior, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, wallpaper for De Gournay, worked with Nespresso , with H&M Home, Pierre Frey, Louis Vuitton, Bisazza and Guerlain, among others.
