Francois Bernard is a designer by education. Head of Bureau de Style Croisements. Art director of many French and foreign companies, including the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts. Specialization: the selection of things for newly opened stores. Hobbies: furniture design. The brightest expositions of the past years: "Nature" (2000), "White" (2001), "Curiosity" (2002), "The Game" (2003), "The Spirit of Contradiction" (2004). In January of this year, showed an installation entitled "Poverty - a utopia of luxury"Salon: What do you do? - My job is to select collections of furniture, bedding, interior items for French and foreign companies. S: Вы давно сотрудничаете с Maison&Objet? - Оргкомитет выставки обратился ко мне более десяти лет тому назад. Им нужна была информация о том, что происходит в настоящее время с французским декором. С тех пор я являюсь постоянным консультантом Maison&Objet.S: What kind of advice is meant? - Я делаю анализ трендов в сфере декора по Европе и миру в целом. Показываю посетителям Maison&Objet новые тенденции, новые цвета, новый стиль поведения, способ жизни, материалы.S: This year you have shown luxury. Why? - After the war, everyone was very interested in fashion, now this interest has declined, and we began to pay much more attention to the house. For example, 10 years ago, if you needed glasses, you went to the store and bought yourself any glasses. Now you will long and carefully select them. This could not affect the quality. Over the past 10 years, it has improved by an order of magnitude: this applies to colors, shapes, materials, appearance in general. Every item now has an idea. I think now is the time to ask the question: what is luxury? Because luxury is everywhere. In a sense, there is a contradiction: is it fair to talk about luxury at all, when there is nothing else around it except for it?S: But your luxury is not exactly luxury in the traditional sense ... - Now there are many different types of luxury. There is the luxury of gold, silver and crystal and ... the luxury of "poor" things, which actually cost a lot. When I say "poverty", I mean that these things seem damaged, damaged, old ... But the materials, the method of production makes them very expensive. In my opinion, "poverty" as the new path of luxury is by far the most intellectual trend. It's time to stop and think about how you can reuse things, even if it's just plastic bags. Designers who are interested in ecology and modern economic processes are looking for answers to this question. I think this is the real analysis. Ten years ago, there were no such ideas. We just made. The problem was to find new colors, new materials, new forms. Now we have grown out of this, and we are concerned about other issues: what exactly we produce, what we actually need, what we want. My exposure is one of the answers.S: Luxury for you personally - what is it? - This is world peace. It is an opportunity to communicate with friends and feel protected. Luxury is when you sit at a table in your modest house on the nature, eat tomatoes from unpretentious plates and feel their taste. Luxury - in simple things. This is my idea.Back
Passing the gallery 
