When my husband and I started to build a house ten years ago, there wasn’t much choice in furniture you just had to make do with whatever the malls had to offer.
Amazing that ten years later we have access to affordable, iconic pieces made by the world’s design geniuses.
One such brand is xO, a French furniture company founded by Gérard Mialet and Philippe Starck in 1984.
The brand is available locally at Kuysen Enterprises Inc. with the latest products previewed at the Milano Furniture Fair last Spring.
The new pieces are in collaboration with Dutch designer Marcel Wanders, Egyptian industrial designer Karim Rashid and French product designer, Philippe Starck.
For his first collaboration with xO, Marcel Wanders designed two collections with names lifted from the Bible.
The Babel chair mixes modern and conventional ideas through a wooden seat with a transparent plastic back.
His Eden collection is a nod to Alice in Wonderland, with monumental vases, tables and stools shaped like chess pawns, in glass and ceramic.
For his second collaboration with xO, Karim Rashid pays tribute to the legendary American designing couple, Charles and Ray Eames.
When the Eames couple designed the DSS chair in 1950, they were the first to realize the huge potential of using plastic for furniture. Their ergonomic one-piece casted seat inspired Rashid’s ambivalent Kareames seat.
Rashid calls it ambivalent because there are different ways of using it. The chair reminds one of a shell that receives and protects, while its thermoformed organic shape holds and envelops life.
In addition to these new pieces, xO revealed new variations of their best-selling indoor/outdoor collections.
Rashid’s Bite me, Baby Bite, and Z Stool come out this year in cool grey.
Philippe Starck’s Bubu 1er comes out in new mold and 12 new colors, from elegant to pop; his Dadada, comes out in three new colors — absinth, ultramarine purple and bright orange; and the imperial Mi Ming returns with a black or silver armrest.
Bubu II plays with transparency and the glamorous colors of red, black and crystal clear, while the timeless, stackable Slick Slick comes in new pastel colors.
The xO collections are now available at the Kuysen Showroom, 236 E. Rodriguez Avenue, Barangay Don Manuel, Quezon City.
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For more information call 740-7509 or 411- 9571 or email info@kuysen.com.