Bernie de le quonya

The owner of the brand de Le Cuona opened a showroom in Moscow

Passing the gallery

Interview prepared: Julia Sakharova

A photo: Elena Savina

Magazine: N4 (148) 2010

Берни де Ле Куонья, designer and owner of the brand de Le Cuona, arrived in Moscow for the opening of the eponymous showroom on Smolenskaya street

About his fabrics and furniture, about inspiration and travel tells Берни де Ле Куонья.

SALON: Here are woven fabrics with oriental ornaments, shimmering velvet, silky linen ... Is this your understanding of luxury?

 - For me, luxury is something discreet, not something non-show. Luxurious thing above all thing, created according to the laws of harmony, beautiful and high quality. And if we are talking about fabric, then, I will add, also pleasant to the touch. For example, in this woolen fabric there is a small percentage of cotton, and to make this woolen fabric even more airy, I added silk. But to make flax look really luxurious, you need to put a lot of work. After all, what flax in the usual sense? This is such a fragile fabric. That it was soft and silky, we are at one of the stages of production process it with water with silicone. But on this pillow - bulk handmade gold embroidery. If I use gold, then this gold is necessarily the kind that looks like aged. Again, this luxury does not look flashy.

S: How do you choose color shades?

 - These are the colors that I love myself. And since I grew up in South Africa, I love the colors of African nature - terracotta, orange, brown - with the addition of gray, green, and blue. These fabrics in the house create incredible comfort, tested.

S: Your own house is decorated with fabrics from the same collections?

 - Yes, only in my house the palette is not bright, but gentle. This is a cream-colored cashmere, which turns into chocolate brown. In general, it is difficult to tell what can be combined with what in the interior: this feeling is at your fingertips. But good designers always know what goes with what. (Smiles.) We, for example, take coarse materials, such as flax, add elegant fabrics in the English style, such as velvet, and something incredible turns out. Velvet is a typical English style: velvet has been produced in London for centuries.

S: Is it possible to mix fabrics in conditional London style with Oriental or African in one interior?

 - Of course, it is possible, and not only in the interior, but even in one piece of furniture. (Our company produces not only fabrics, but also furniture according to our own sketches.) I travel a lot, often visit Milan, Brussels. But the main thing for me is Africa, after all, and also the East. We bought antique English weaving machines and sent them to Kashmir in India; Now there are woven woven fabrics. We use them in furniture upholstery, sometimes - two or more in one piece of furniture, we combine them with natural leather.

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