I love light and I hate to see windows cluttered up by kilos of fabric, however precious it might be! A window is an opening on the exterior – a link to life.
Lilou Grumbach-Marquand
For the last 20 years, Lilou Grumbach-Marquand’s supremely elegant screens, stores and partitions have been in great demand. Diane von Fürstenberg goes to sleep in a four-poster bed reinvented by Lilou Grumbach-Marquand. Leading decorators like Peter Marino, Jacques Grange or Frank de Biasi adore her work. Now PIASA are paying tribute to her exceptional talent by offering for auction a score of her remarkable creations.
Lilou comes from a theatre and cinema family, but chose a career in Haute Couture when she was 18. For several weeks she waited for Mademoiselle Chanel outside the Ritz, wearing a Chanel dress. Chanel finally noticed her and gave her a job – the prelude to over 15 years of intense collaboration. When Coco died, Lilou went it alone.
She discovered the traditional Japanese sudare on her travels, then ‘the costumedesigner Tan Giudicelli asked me to make some for his interior, so I took the plunge!’ she explains.
Compartmentalizing space by using screens, blinds, canopies, banners and kimono-stands would prove an exalting task. Her every design was unique and made by hand from a luxuriant range of materials – ribbons, braid, tassles, silver or amber balls, gingko leaf, passementerie, fiber, silk, linen, edging of Indian sari…. All the hours of work produced spectacular and refined results.
The main thing is that each material guarantees ‘the purest transparency.’ The screen is a time-honoured element of decoration, filtering light and transcending interiors by redesigning their contours.
PIASA is delighted to pay homage to Lilou Grumbach-Marquand who has infused fabrics with the breath of poetry…
