LuxuryMade – An Exciting New Exhibition Coming Your Way

This year the 14th London Design Festival sees the launch of LuxuryMade – a new boutique exhibition for contemporary decorative interiors

Targeted mostly at interior designers, although open to the public for one day (September 24th, tickets cost £15), this show brings together an impressive array of manufacturers and designers specialising in top-end, supremely luxurious products.

You might think that a relatively small show – featuring just 40 stands – might disappear in the white noise of this mega Festival. There are after all no less than five major design shows hosting over 400 events, installations and exhibitions in landmark locations and seven designated design districts. LuxuryMade is however an exhibition with a difference. It is a carefully curated selection of makers and designers in multiple fields from furniture to rugs, glass to stone carving. All are distinguished by the exquisite quality of their designs and craftsmanship. This is no less than a privileged peek at an interior designer’s little black book of contacts.

The concept of ‘luxury’ may sometimes seem debased when it is used to sell everything from dog food to chocolate bars. For all its universal highjacking however, we are as a culture, always finding a new consensus of what constitutes genuine ‘luxury’ or indeed a ‘masterpiece’ – and it is daily tested by market forces. Clearly in a rapidly evolving commercial and cultural environment, what we – only in the last few decades – now define as ‘luxury’, has completely turned on its head thousands of years of consensus, that relied on the rarity value of priceless materials. It’s not so much diamonds, platinum and silk that rock our worlds these days. It’s cheap and readily available, mass-producible materials like plastics and concrete and humble materials like wood, wool and glass – and this is amply reflected in the LuxuryMade line up.

Often what will define ‘luxury’ are the human skills that fashion the most pedestrian of materials into something of value. But what we value also inevitably has to respond – often subliminally – to the huge global changes and realignments under a recessionary economy. In a world defined by crises of migration, the environment, austerity, perpetual insecurity – and now Brexit, whatever that means – the concept of ‘luxury’ is being redefined once again. Will it morph into a wider popularity for ‘Rough Luxe’ – a style that embraces the humilities of imperfection in place of ostentatious bling (or Wabi Sabi shorn of spiritualism)? Who knows. The future – like the past – is another country, they do things differently there… But LuxuryMade is indeed a perfect snapshot of the nebulous and protean business of ‘luxury’ in the 21st century.

The luxurious theme of the exhibition is magnificently underlined by the Victorian extravagance of the two-level venue, that for decades has stood moth-balled and gathering dust. On the main level, the Pillar Hall was a grand banqueting room with soaring Corinthian columns ; and the Upper Pillar Hall, once housed the UK’s first electric cinema no less. Both spaces are part of the Olympia site and were opened in 1886 as the Prince’s Apartments. This was always going to be a venue begging to be in the spotlight once again, which with LuxuryMade it assuredly is.

Exhibitors at LuxuryMade include many established and familiar names like Gainsborough – which has been producing the highest quality fabrics for over 100 years. Similarly Cassina/Poltrona Frau and Vitra have for decades been producing many iconic pieces by internationally renowned designers. The show also includes some relatively newer names that have stirred much attention including Tom Faulkner, Julian Chichester, Duistt and Hamilton Conte. But the show is not just about fabric and furniture. There are – inter alia – outstanding rug designs by Bazaar Velvet, glass designs by Plateaux and Lasvit, and the innovative wall coverings of Studio 198.

This show that is targeted at today’s luxury products is like the contemporary version of PAD (or pre-PAD) and many of these products – as masterpieces in design – will no doubt feature in the PADs of the future. And when you think that 100% Design is a big broad church and Decorex is more than slightly weighted towards historicism – there is a gaping gap that LuxuryMade may yet fill. LuxuryMade may be ’boutique’ for now, but we suspect it will grow and grow…

GDC interiors Journal is delighted to be a media partner of LuxuryMade at its inaugural show, and here we get some helpful insights about the show straight from the horse’s mouth – Show Director William Knight

LuxuryMade Interior Design Show: 21-24 September, 2016

held at the Pillar Hall, Olympia London, Hammersmith Road, London W14 8UX
Tickets: Trade FREE (£15 on door) – Public £15 – Your ticket will also gain you access to 100% Design, the UK’s largest trade event for architects and designers.