Elizabeth garouste & Mattia Bonetti
Between artists, designers, and decorators, the duo Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti introduced the Barbare style into the elegant, hushed interiors of collectors.
Their furnitures are sometimes produced in series, published by Néotu or the gallery En attendant les Barbares, and sometimes unique, custom-made for complete interior decoration projects. How chic it must have been to commission the most fashionable artists of the time to furnish a luxurious apartment! Christian Lacroix indulged in that luxury in 1987, when establishing his new couture house at 73 Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, one of Paris’s most prestigious addresses.
Garouste and Bonetti constantly pushed the boundaries of chic.
The Barbare world is baroque and nonconformist. It revives a taste for ornamentation that had long been neglected. Flamboyant and expressive, the Barbare style is an ode to long-forgotten traditional techniques. Hammered metal, adorned with a green patina reminiscent of Bronze Age archaeological finds, sits alongside animal hide seating secured with leather straps. Closures are operated by near-prehistoric pegs. This world startles the viewer, as the sensory experience is striking and completely unique.
The Barbare style stands out so sharply that it has become iconic—perched somewhere between controlled savagery and the refinement worthy of the finest Haussmann-style apartments.
Available pieces
