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PaperCity September 2026 Dallas

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see furniture standing alone in the middle of a refined, empty gallery," Laure says. "Seeing furniture in a real configuration, surrounded by eclectic objects, makes you actually want to sit down, touch it, try it." The space is designed for gathering, in the spirit of Andrée Putman, who always placed great importance on hospitality. The collection draws from an archive generated across 150-plus commissions — hotels, residences, retail spaces, cultural institutions — now translated into tables, seating, lighting, rugs, and textiles. Standout pieces reinterpret Putman originals in new materials: the Mille et Un Carré table rendered in mirror, the Trois Carats et Demi low tables in stainless steel and mixed materials, the Petite Ourse armchair in bouclé wool and stained ash. The Luminator floor lamp revives a classic Putman design. For Laure, the coherence running through all of it comes down to a single idea. "Beyond a Putman style," she says, "there is a Putman method: b u i l d , l i g h t e n , humanize." A n d r é e Putman, born in Paris in 1925, came of age at the Café de Flore amid Sartre, Camus, and Giacometti, and redirected an early musical education into one of the 20th century's most influential design careers. In 1978, she founded Ecart International, reviving overlooked modernist furniture by Eileen Gray, J e a n - M i c h e l F r a n k , and others — earning h e r t h e n i c k n a m e "the archaeologist of modernity." (Ecart I n t e r n a t i o n a l w a s purchased in 2024 by Pierre Yovanovitch and rebranded as Ecart, continuing to reissue heritage designs.) But it was New York where Andrée first broke through. As Aurélie Laure puts it, "Andrée was the most American of French women." Her 1984 Morgans Hotel — designed for her friends Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, the founders of Studio 54 — is widely credited as the world's first boutique hotel, introducing her signature black-and-white checkerboard floors to a global audience. Commissions that followed ranged from interiors for the supersonic Air France Concorde jet and the office of the French Culture Minister to flagships for Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, Yves Saint Laurent, and Guerlain. She died in 2013 at 87. This fall, Paris Design Week will launch the studio's archival designs paired with new interpretations. The Paris edition Left: Elephant chair. Below: Double Je mirror. Bouton d'Or. Portrait of Andrée Putman and her handkerchief with lipstick imprint fished from the trash, shot with a Hasselblad camera by Jean Larivière in 2006. ©JEAN LARIVIÈRE 114

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