A low-slung
platform bed is made up with military precision in crisp dark linens.
Plump oatmeal-hued pillows are perfectly arraged on a long leather
sofa. And a sleek oak dining table is set for eight with an arrangement
of startling chartreuse lilies placed at its center.If it wasn’t
for a salesperson discreetly replenishing shelves with candles and
one-off ceramic bowls and vases, Catherine Memmi’s new 3,300-square-foot
store in New York’s SoHo – her first in U.S. –
could easily pass for the home of a neat-as-a-pin minimalist. Correction,
make that neominimalist.
“Pure minimalism is too cold
for me”, says Memmi, the French furniture and accessories
designer who spearheaded the sparse but luxurious style more than
a decade ago. Since opening her first eponymous store in Paris in
1993, Memmi has become known for creating simply contoured pieces
in fine materials and a strict palette of black, white, gray, sand,
brown, and shade of green she calls “the color of leaves.”
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Much like her shop in Paris, Deauville, London, and Tokyo, Memmi’s
latest temple to harmonious living – a lofty space on Greene
Street that included two floors, a mezzanine, and a patio –showcases
her wares in a series of vignettes that invite follow neominimalists
(especially those who can’t resist the lure of an eight-foot
white leather sofa) to move right in. Deep chairs upholstered in
linen and cotton look right as can be around streamlined wenge-wood,
sycamore, and oak tables. “I like using rustic materials in
modern context,” she says.
Completing the picture are glass shelves lined with Memmi’s
signature like candles, room sprays, and bath and beauty products
in evocative scents like sable ambré (amber sand) and concombre
(cucumber), which until now were available only at a handful of
shops in the U.S. “For years Americans came into my stores
around the world and asked me when I was opening in the States,”
says Memmi. “I was waiting until everything was just right.”
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