How Matter and Shape Draws Design Fashion Crowd

While major fashion brands showcased their fall ready-to-wear collections in Paris, a design event three years in the making drew a different crowd to the French capital.

Matter and Shape ran from Friday to Monday across two pavilions in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries. Its list of 70 exhibitors included influential design pillars along with fashion names like Ann Demeulemeester, film names like Italian film director Luca Guadagnino (collaborating with Austrian brand Lobmeyr), beauty and lifestyle giants like Byredo, as well as Birkenstock 1774 and audio specialist Bang & Olufsen. Growing fragrance platform Olfactory Signals welcomed visitors with a sensory journey, highlighting the burgeoning relationship between fragrance, design and art.

A bridge between design and other creative sectors, Matter and Shape is the brainchild of Matthieu Pinet, who launched it as an online platform. Having joined trade show organizer WSN in 2022 as managing director of Salon de la Lingerie and Interfilière, he decided to turn it into a physical salon.

Since the launch in 2024, the salon’s creative direction has been shaped by Dan Thawley, the former editor in chief of A Magazine Curated By. Thawley told WWD that he recognized that the traditional trade show model is in rapid evolution and creating a sense of diversity and dialogue is key for the future. The third edition explored the theme of scale, understood as the relationship between objects, bodies and spaces.

“We want to represent both big and small players and show industrial design next to one-of-a-kind collectibles and make sure that that does feel like the way people actually build up their homes…objects that could come from a gallery but could also come from an industrial producer or even from Zara Home,” Thawley explained.

Here are some of the event’s distinguishing qualities.

It’s Niche and Curated

“Within an enclosed, atmospheric space, visitors are invited to discover my collections in an intimate way. The installation reveals objects, dinnerware and lighting, offering a new perspective on my design universe,” designer Demeulemeester said.

At the fair, Demeulemeester unveiled a collection of objects with Belgian design brand Serax, with which she has collaborated since 2019. An immersive project conceived as a black box, the installation revealed objects, dinnerware and lighting as if emerging from darkness, emphasizing materiality, contrast and emotion, and offering a new perspective on Demeulemeester’s distinctive design universe.

It’s Intimate

“It’ not big or loud…it’s a place and a space that allows for conversation and dialogue,” said Paula Gerbase, creative director of Georg Jensen.

Gerbase, who stepped into her role at Georg Jensen in 2024, unveiled a collection of reissued archive jewelry.

Named The Collector, 11 jewelry pieces drawn from Georg Jensen’s Copenhagen archive were originally crafted by pioneering female artist-makers who joined the house in the latter half of the 20th century. The jewelry was presented alongside works by the original artist-makers, including Kim Naver, Nanna Ditzel and Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe, offering deeper insight into their individual practices and artistic legacies.

“I felt like this is the right space to honor this collection and these female makers that were in the ’60s honored by Georg Jensen by being invited to simply create,” she said.

The Crowd Is Influential

“There are really high-end, intellectual, quality exhibitors here. On one end, you have Lobmeyr and on the other Herzog & de Meuron — those are my adjacencies,” said Leslie Johnsen, a fashion world veteran and American living in France, who presented her home offerings from Chapelle Industries, which launched earlier this year. The atelier works with European artisans and craft preservationists with rare patrimonial savoir-faire, to make everything from linens to accessories like hooks and knife holders enhanced with gold leaf detailing.

An Intimate Ecosystem

“What feels really nice about Matter and Shape, or at least how I feel, is it’s quite like a community,” said Milan-based designer and artist Conie Vallese, who recently worked with Fendi for its Design Miami 2025 project Fonderia Fendi. “There is a connection in that sense of togetherness. For me, the ecosystem is important.”

The Fashion Draw

“It sounded interesting.…A design salon happening at the same time as fashion week. It just made sense. It’s a design audience, which is also design-savvy in terms of interiors,” said Johannes Schön, director of brand and cultural strategy for Canadian research studio Bocci. For the event, Bocci founder Omer Arbel and his outlets and components firm 22 System teamed with Harry Nuriev’s Paris-based design studio Crosby Studios and the debut of a new functional piece of art, punctuated by pluggable objects that define new generations: a Hello Kitty candy tin and Bicycle playing cards among them. Named “Plug-It,” the piece was reimagined as a living system, reflecting on how contemporary spaces are powered, inhabited and continuously reconfigured.

The Retail Community

Matter and Shape was also a way to catch fashion retailers looking to expand their lifestyle and home sections, commented exhibitors.

“The response was positive,” said Carlos Tavares, who manages Tavares 1922, a historic Portuguese fine jewelry brand, with his sister Ana. The family showcased pieces from its “Shell” table collection made with shells collected at local beaches. Tavares said through Matter and Shape the family-run firm made connections with Harvey Nichols and retailers in the U.S. and the Middle East.

The architectural framework of the event was envisaged by London-New York City studio JA Projects. Cross-cultural dialogue was abuzz through the two pavilions, where passersby included media names like Dazed Media cofounder Jefferson Hack and French design pioneer Thierry Lemaire.

“Looking ahead, organizers are focused on creating cultural dialogue and bringing unexpected entities together,” Thawley said.

“That might mean a heritage company being revisited by a young designer or doing something differently to show their work in a new light. It may be a new brand that needs to break onto the scene in a different way and is looking at different methods [other] than the traditional route of showing alone, doing a gallery show, or [is] looking to break through the noise of bigger events like Salone del Mobile.Milano.”