WORDS: KIERA BUCKLEY-JONES PICTURES: LUCKY IF SHARP58 ELLEDECORATION.CO.UK AU G U S T 2019
TRENDS
THE COLLABORATION
PIERRE FREY
X CHRISTIAN
ASTUGUEVIEILLE
The new ‘Coquecigrues’ collection is an energetic
collision of styles born of a long creative friendship
WORDS: KIERA BUCKLEY-JONESPatrick Frey, the patriarch of fabric brand
Pierre Frey, has been friends with Christian
Astuguevieille for years. A design polymath,
Astuguevieille ( below) is the artistic director
of Comme des Garçons Parfums and has
designed jewellery for Hermès and Lanvin,
but it’s his rope-covered furniture (stool, below)
for which he’s most famous. Frey, meanwhile,
is responsible for curating the extensive Pierre
Frey archive – a resource used by designers
and museums alike. The duo’s ‘Coquecigrues’
collection of seven wallpapers and nine fabrics
marks the first time they’ve worked together.
A true collision of styles, it exudes the colourful
joie de vivre of Pierre Frey and the dynamic
energy and artistry of Astuguevieille’s work.
The surreal ‘Les Coquecigrues’ print (right),
for example, is an adaptation of a design kept
at the Musée de la Toile de Jouy that dates
back to 1792. To modernise it, the colours were
intensified and the pattern enlarged by 300
per cent. For an even more contemporary take,
there’s the ‘Symboles Les Coquecigrues M’
(far right), daubed with Astuguevieille’s graffiti-
like mashrabiya (a latticework often seen on
Arabic buildings), the vibrant toile still visible
beneath. ‘What pleases me,’ says Frey, ‘is that
the collection is very French. It came from
18th-century French documents, and it is this
classicism that Christian has expanded and
recoloured, so that it becomes something else.’
From £192 per metre (pierrefrey.com).