METAL WORKS: Julien Dossena is the latest fashion designer to dip into curating.
Sotheby’s has asked the creative director of French fashion house Rabanne to bring his eye to its “Important Design” sale of exceptional masterpieces of 20th-century design, set to take place on Nov. 14 at its new Paris headquarters.
Dossena has selected iconic pieces by designers such as Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Tom Dixon and Shiro Kuramata, whose work is currently on show at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa.
In a short video, he described what guided his choices, and highlighted some personal favorites.
“I perceived a great sense of poetry and I really appreciated that, because it is also the way I envision design,” he said. “I have a very naive rapport with design. Objects always affect me in some way. They are like companions in a way, or a family, almost.”
Julien Dossena
Paolo Roversi/Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Some of his selections bear a clear relationship to the brand’s founder Paco Rabanne, whose first couture collection in 1966 was called “Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials.” A case in point: Maria Pergay’s stainless steel Ring Chair from 1968.
“The metal work is extremely sophisticated, and also the crafting of the material is avant-garde. It shows a purity that reminds me of the first pieces that I discovered when I first came to the maison’s archives,” Dossena observed.
Likewise Antoni Miralda’s Have a Good Year armchair, made with repurposed rubber tires.
“Anything that makes use of a material in a new way, seeking to find new meaning in it, is something I always find interesting. That also brings me back to my work, too, since it is also the departure point for design, specifically at Paco Rabanne,” he said.
Maria Pergay’s Ring chair.
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
While designs by Ettore Sottsass tie into Dossena’s contemporary reworking of the Space Age aesthetic, some of his choices were more unexpected, like a pair of monkey sculptures by François-Xavier Lalanne, estimated at 1.5 million euros to 2 million euros.
Alongside the Paris event, Sotheby’s is hosting an online sale in Milan featuring pieces by Gio Ponti, Max Ingrand and Angelo Mangiarotti, among others.
Fashion designers are in high demand in the art world.
This fall, Christie’s tapped Simon Porte Jacquemus to curate the exhibition preceding a sale of works by François-Xavier Lalanne in New York City, and asked Alexis Mabille to select items for a private sale in Paris celebrating the taste of the great couturiers.
In the last year, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner and Rejina Pyo have also curated shows for galleries and museums.
Antoni Miralda’s Have a Good Year armchair.
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
