A Chair Collection that Celebrates Female Icons with High-Heeled Feet

FDT Bureau

French designers Pierre Yovanovitch and Christian Louboutin teamed up to create a unique seating collection, featuring chairs with high heels as feet, intended to symbolize female individuality. This collaboration was unveiled at Yovanovitch’s gallery in New York City and consists of nine bespoke oakwood chairs, each inspired by female figures from history, mythology and film. The collection includes chairs named Dita, Josefina, Syrena, Nefertari, Zenobie, Radicalla, Morphea, Metropolissa and Pompadour. Know more about it on FURNITURE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY (FDT).

The idea for the chairs came to Yovanovitch when he envisioned using women’s feet as the front legs of a chair. This concept led him to collaborate with Louboutin, whose enthusiasm helped bring the idea to life. Together, they designed chairs that represent iconic women. For instance, the Nefertari chair, named after the ancient Egyptian queen, features golden-bronze heels to symbolize royalty. The Zenobie chair, a tribute to the third-century queen of Palmyra, is adorned with turquoise stones around its front legs.

The Metropolissa chair, with a metallic leather seat, pays homage to Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 film Metropolis, one of the first science fiction films to feature a female robot. The Syrena chair, named after the Polish word for mermaid, is finished with marine-blue fabric and fishnet-covered legs, reflecting its aquatic inspiration. Morphea, inspired by the Greek god of sleep and dreams, features cloudy upholstery and gold-painted feet that blend into the chair's blond wood base.

Other notable designs include the Dita chair, evoking the burlesque style of American dancer Dita Von Teese with silver heels and sequin-embroidered upholstery, and the Josefina chair, which honours 1920s dancer and World War II spy Josephine Baker with embroidered seating and leather fringe. The Pompadour chair’s gilded metal heels are reminiscent of 1750s French Crescent dressers, paying tribute to Madame de Pompadour, an advisor to King Louis XV.

Accompanying this limited edition collection is the Simply Nude series, which references Louboutin’s Nudes skin tone shoe range launched in 2013. The Simply Nude chairs feature Louboutin’s signature red-soled heels and aim to broadly represent female individuality without depicting specific characters or allegories. Behind the craftsmanship of these chairs are skilled French artisans selected by Louboutin and Yovanovitch. These artisans include embroidery ateliers Maisons Vermont and Lesage Interieurs, fabric painter Christophe Martin, and Louboutin’s cobbler Minuit Moins 7, who handled the upholstery work.

Image credit: Eric Petschek