You're About to See This New Faye Toogood Chair Everywhere
At last year’s edition of Milan Design Week, ELLE DECOR editors spotted a pervasive trend: full, curvaceous, plump chairs were now en vogue. This year, that “squish,” as we dubbed it, has reached perhaps its most heightened form yet. British designer and artist Faye Toogood has teamed up with Italian furniture brand Poltrona Frau for a cushy, soft, bold new collection called—what else?—Squash.
The new series represents the first time that Toogood and Frau have teamed up, though the manufacturer has a long history of working with designers and artists across aesthetics and disciplines. Squash represented a departure for both parties. “I’d never worked in leather,” Toogood tells ELLE DECPR. “It’s the first time that I created something soft; I’ve worked a lot in hard materials. That was a challenge for me.”
Still, the duo had a similar starting point. Poltrona Frau’s founder, Renzo Frau, took inspiration from iconic pieces of English furniture, most notably the chesterfield sofa, when he started the company in 1912. Over a century later, when Toogood added her own flair to the brand’s catalogue, she pulled from similar references. The collection’s leather-wrapped, full-length mirror, for example, was inspired by an 18th-century English folk mirror that she found in an antique store; similarly, the rug, a design she painted by hand, came from an old English game.
The showstopper of the collection, though, is undoubtedly the Squash armchair. The piece’s exaggerated, curvaceous shapes are both bold and inviting, and the leather is gathered and creased in a way that accentuates the piece’s plump silhouette. For Toogood, it was about creating tension between a clean, minimal shape and an oversize cushion. In many ways, it feels like a contemporary iteration of Frau’s iconic Vanity Fair armchair. “Poltrona Frau’s been brave,” she says of the venture. “They took a risk and did something completely different.”
Indeed, regardless of whether it suits your particular interior design scheme, it’s undeniable that Squash has impact. Adds Poltrona Frau CEO Nicola Coropulis, “You can like it or not, but you can’t say that it doesn’t have its own personality.”
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