During the last year I have been strangely entranced by clothing in the same way that I have been entranced by furniture and design since I was a teenager. Maybe it's age? Who knows. At any rate, as luck would have it my favorite jeans shop, G-Star Raw, recently decided to date one of my favorite furniture companies, Vitra. The result? Some very expensive and subtly beautiful love children.

I got to see all of the nine actually selling designs up close in the MEPA district and got to get the low down from Shubhankar Ray (G-Star's Global Marketing Director) in the Vitra showroom.

Shubhankar was direct and super cool about their partnership with Vitra. While he admitted that "G-Star" was totally made up, the "Raw" part was very real as they looked for ways to introduce their "rawer" approach to design in other areas. He called these design partnerships "interventions", and I appreciated how respectful the interventions were with Prouvé's classic designs. Due to the fact that the G-Star offices were filled with many Prouvé designs, they had come to know the vintage designs well and appreciate them. Their own additions were focused on stripping down the materials (wood, metal and leather) and on updating the proportions (just a bit wider, please).

What you see here is an even more rarified version of these Prouvé classics with a clock ticking as to when they will disappear, which is always dramatic. My favorite? The Fauteuil Direction chair (1951), which was deliciously ready to become a great home office chair or even slip into dining chair status if the owner was ready to pony up for at least two. :-)

G-Star, the Prouvé family and Vitra have worked on giving some of Jean Prouvé's best known designs a fresh and contemporary look and feel, while re-discovering some of Prouvé's less known designs. Nine pieces from the full collection of seventeen will be available for purchase in a limited edition.

>> Go To Prouvé Raw Website @ Vitra