Exalted hedonism in the Maison
PARIS—With rising temperatures that were even higher than what we had left in Manila, the theme at the Maison & Objet design, decorating and lifestyle show was most welcome indeed: “Enjoy, A Quest for Pleasures,” an escape we really need not just from the unseasonable weather due to climate change, but from all the other upheavals that the world has been experiencing—from the war to the recent pandemic.
The inspiration theme seeks to invite new excitement, “an enchantment freed from the austerity to which brands have submitted in order to tailor their line of conduct to the crisis context,” according to the Peclers forecasting agency that would like us to see it more as an “initiation” quest than a trend. It’s a rediscovery of happiness through colors, extravagance, audacity and humor.
This search for an “exalted hedonism” may seem contradictory to all we have learned that resulted in a “frugal hedonism,” which associated the notion of “well-being” with virtuous and reasonable consumption and a connection to our environment and nature. Although we are not leaving all that behind, there is clearly a need to ease off.
“We try to be ultra-reasonable and we realize that in the end, we are all a collection of contradictions,” comments Patricia Beausoleil, director of Home, Environments and Consumer Goods at Peclers. “We need to get to these more reserved, exclusive, individual, almost selfish territories to maintain a form of well-being. We need to return to forms of optimism.”
More than any other generation, the adults of today seem more determined not to forget the children they once were—a nostalgia for a carefree existence that ruled their lives at the turn of the millennium. These survivors of the Y2K bug who have grown weary of the gloom that set in after the start of a century rich in promise are gravitating to regressive references and recreational philosophy. Optimism and assumed pleasures need not be incompatible with the issues at work and the transformations needed in society. As long as consumption is reasonable and virtuous, it can work together with an uninhibited hedonism and become a firing engine for creativity.
To better navigate happiness in the land of design, three paths have been proposed to walk freely in the fertile and joyful imagination of today’s contemporary creators, who take all the creative crossroads of inspirations and influences to attempt a wondrous fantasy of hybrid amalgamations that exalt all our senses.
The festive decadents
This quest for pleasures is characterized by seductive expressiveness, driven by brands and creators who are not afraid to stand out. For festive decadents, life is a stage and identity is a field of experimentation through which, based on their desires and beliefs, they express their way of being in the world and their bases of belonging. Self-determination extends its boundaries and singularity becomes a key to successful identity.
Playing with appearances, they adopt a theatrical relationship with the self and make the excessive and the decadent essential components of the image they project. Refusing to be spectators, they overturn traditional codes of propriety to adopt a sensual and free lifestyle. Made public, the intimate becomes “extimate” and takes on an almost artificial character.
A play of surfaces for seductive expressiveness @peclersparis
3D printed vase by Audrey Large @rickytchitov
Perfume bottles by Reflections Copenhagen @peclersparis
Punk Vase by Laurence Brabant & Alain Villechange @rickytchitov
A play of surfaces for seductive expressiveness @peclersparis
3D printed vase by Audrey Large @rickytchitov
Perfume bottles by Reflections Copenhagen @peclersparis
Punk Vase by Laurence Brabant & Alain Villechange @rickytchitov
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For their ultra-expressive home, light comes into play for glossy and metallic effects with sensual shapes. Everyday artefacts are transformed into status vectors of singularity. Assertive and precious aesthetics draw on codes of glamour and theater, which is evident in the tableau of a bedroom with red wine velvet flooring and a generous bed that’s almost a stage, covered in metallic sheets—an ode to a flamboyant nightlife experience, calling to mind disco nightclubs like Studio 54. Here, one becomes the guilt-free actor of one’s own existence.
Sensitive hedonists achieve this connection to a new El Dorado where they can immerse themselves by using the digital and virtual as a means of inventing a new way to be present in the world and to create imaginary escapes. Digital becomes the gateway to new perceptions of oneself—a fun, uncomplicated and accessible well-being.
Collective optimists
For this tribe, a liberating creativity reconnects with the joy of carefree play through staging with quirky humor, turning their lives into an experimental playground where they can rediscover a simple and instantaneous form of happiness. Transforming the home into a generative space for the good life, they immerse themselves, with an almost naïve eye, in playful and surprising experiences.
To shape a happy society, childhood and adolescence are invoked, drawing on new chromatic registers where experimentation and encounters with others are paramount in transforming a shared space into a collective playground.
Milù cat sculpture bench and Palm Beach lamps by Atelier Biagetti @rickytchitov
Milù cat sculpture bench and Palm Beach lamps by Atelier Biagetti @rickytchitov
Ceramic pieces from Softedge Studio @maisonetobjet
A kitchen becomes a collective playground. @peclersparis
Milù cat sculpture bench and Palm Beach lamps by Atelier Biagetti @rickytchitov
Milù cat sculpture bench and Palm Beach lamps by Atelier Biagetti @rickytchitov
Ceramic pieces from Softedge Studio @maisonetobjet
A kitchen becomes a collective playground. @peclersparis
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The living room is a totemic place for collective optimism through Diego Faivre’s playful furniture and vases, The Bubble Clock by Teun Zwets with bouncy lines and regressive, minimalist table and chairs by Swedish studio Stamuli.
Sensitive hedonists
With sensoriality in the world undermined, human links have been stretched, digital technology continues to push back the boundaries of reality and the present is struggling to reassure. Individuals are trying to rebuild a viable environment, seeking to reconnect with a form of physicality so as to rediscover a sense of anchoring and intimacy with the outside world.
Sensitive hedonists achieve this connection to a new El Dorado where they can immerse themselves by using the digital and virtual as a means of inventing a new way to be present in the world and to create imaginary escapes. Digital becomes the gateway to new perceptions of oneself—a fun, uncomplicated and accessible well-being.
Objects, gestures and rituals are used to reinvent the way we communicate with others. Reality is re-poetized through sensitive, reassuring and immersive utopias. Organic meta-therapies take inspiration from plants and sublimate their sensoriality. The limits of physicality are pushed back to give life to new dreamlike materialities. For this tribe, pleasure is above all a quest for intimate well-being: Happiness is a form of harmony.