Design and mosaic coalesce into distinctive cubed furniture conceived by AZ Factory

Founded by the late Alber Elbaz and Richemont in 2020, fashion brand AZ Factory carries an objective to create beautiful, practical, and solutions-driven fashion designs that works for and relates to everyone. It prides itself as a brand that combines smart design, social responsibility, and technological innovation. With a high standard of style, AZ Factory blends traditional craftsmanship with forward-looking applications infused with technology, to achieve true innovation. Being a brand that cares about people, the planet, as well as creativity, it supports young talent as a multi-disciplinary platform that goes beyond the conventional.

The product designers behind AZ Factory conceived the idea of their most recent objects, a result of a creative collaboration involving four different individuals, each bringing their own expertise and vision—one of them is a stool design that comes together as a youthful mosaic of different materials. It features a basic cubic shape albeit with a slight twist—one of its corners is sliced off, creating a diagonal edge, giving it a fun distinction. The edge is covered with mosaic tiles in myriad colours and sizes, which contrast harmoniously with its plain ply form. The surfaces of the wooden furniture are kept either bare or clad in headstock leather, showing the materials' tactile textures. The furniture design combines different materials and colours in cohesive, artistic, and unexpected ways, where the mosaic tiles add a touch of sparkle and texture to the sliced corner. The pieces are arranged seemingly at random, creating a variance of colours, textures and shapes, giving it an artistic appearance, as if it was made from recycled or found objects.

FERRILLOBELLI is a Milan-based architecture and design studio that specialises in wood and leather work and crafted the stools with panels of deadstock leather. Friul Mosaic is a historical mosaic company that has been creating mosaic art since 1969, decorating the product designs with hand-cut natural-coloured enamels. The collaboration was a multi-faceted process that combined design, craftsmanship and artistry.

The stools are not only useful for sitting but also for creating a sculptural effect within a space when stacked on top of each other, forming different shapes and forms. The limited edition handcrafted pieces were conceived as a backdrop for the now-concluded Paris Fashion Week this year. They complimented AZ Factory's Fall/Winter 2023 collection, which debuted at the event that took place in the beautiful penthouse of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, France. The collection is designed by Molly Molloy and Lucinda Chambers, who have collaborated frequently in the past. Molloy was the former design director of womenswear at Marni, and Chambers was the former Fashion Director of British Vogue. The collection honours Alber Elbaz’s legacy, blending his passion for traditional craftsmanship with his vision for the future. The entire show and the exhibited collection paid homage to collaboration, artistic exchange, and a commitment to sustainability in design.

Each stool is decorated with hand-cut, natural-coloured enamels that are made from recycled glass powder. The enamels form patterns that match the motifs of the clothing collection, visually connecting in the space, where the sustainable designs became models themselves, contributing to a continuous theme. They created a sense of unity between the showcased furniture and fashion pieces, standing as symbols among the clothing, and paying homage to colour, form, and the ethos of collaboration and artistic exchange that underpins this project.

As witnessed in the stool designs, the realms of fashion and furniture are two creative tangents that influenced each other in various ways to express the style and identity of the furniture designers. The creative process involved crafting products that are functional and aesthetically pleasing, underscored by research and innovation.