lee broom
FEATURE Fiona McCarthyi
t’s not hard to see why furniture, lighting
and accessories designer Lee Broom – with
his shock of platinum-blond hair and Fifties Rat
Pack style – is seen as one of the great showmen of
the design world. Having launched into interiors in
2007 with a collection of neon-lit chairs, he has since
showcased a grandfather clock handcrafted from
marble and designed a gravity-defying hanging chair
made with just two metal hoops. Stepping into Lee’s
world feels a little like being Alice falling through the
r a b bi t ho l e t o Won d erl a n d.
‘Doing a show means I can create a story around
the pieces,’ he explains. ‘You wouldn’t display them
like this in your home, but it gives me an opportunity
to create a narrative to frame each collection, weaving
an ongoing thread through my work.’ One year his
showroom, Electra House in Shoreditch, was
transformed into a f lower shop with thousands of
fresh f lowers surrounding new pieces displayed in
glass cases and on marble plinths. And in Milan for
his tenth anniversary in 2017, the all-white Time
Machine collection was contrasted within a dank,
derelict vault in the central train station.
Birmingham-born Lee’s sense of the dramatic
owes much to his childhood spent treading the
boards as a budding young actor (he was a member
of the Royal Shakespeare Company at seven) before
he won a fashion design competition aged 17, which
led to him to intern for Vivienne Westwood. He
went on to enrol at London’s prestigious art college
Central Saint Martins.
‘ Fa s h i o n t a u g h t me f o r m, s i l h o u e t t e a n d p r o c e s s ,
which I soon realised could be the same for making a
dress as a lamp,’ Lee says. ‘It also taught me to design
from a very emotional place – so a silhouette and the
materials, rather than practicality and functionality,
are always at the forefront of my mind when I first
think about an idea,’ he explains. ‘That way, I end up
with something a little more sculptural and unusual.’
Longevity is also key. It is why he tends to evolve
existing collections with different colours orDESIGN PROFILE
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112 livingetc.com