Best Interior Designer*Andrée Putman

Andrée Putman was born in a wealthy family of bankers and notables from Lyon. Her grandfather, Edouard Aynard founded the Maynard & Sons Bank; her grandmother, Edouard’s wife, is Rose de Montgolfier, a descendant of the hot-air balloon inventors’ family. Her father is a graduate from the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure who speaks seven languages but swore a life of austerity and seclusion to protest against his own milieu; her mother is a concert performer, a whimsical piano player who finds comfort in the frivolity of “being a great artist without a stage”. Andrée grew up in the 6th district of Paris, rue des Grands-Augustins. As a child, she spent most of her summers at the Fontenay Abbey, a magnificent Cistercian structure which used to be the Montgolfier brothers’ workshop. This austere place influences her first aesthetical perceptions: the geometry of the architecture, the views and the perspectives, “the effects of stone and light, the richness and the diversity of non-colours…” These elements find an echo in her future achievements:

“All this made me very wary of awful excesses of anything”.

Andrée is fifteen years old when she empties her bedroom and furnishes it with just a hard iron bed, a chair and a Miró poster on the white walls. This early expression of her desire of independence leads to a confrontation with her family who wonders “if she realises the sorrow she makes them feel?” However, Andrée’s artistic education first came through music: her mother, Louise Saint-René Taillandier, takes her and her sister to concerts very early and urges them to learn the piano. She is nevertheless told that her hands are not the ones of piano player and that, as a consequence, she will never be a virtuoso. She therefore studies composition at the National Conservatory of Paris. At the age of nineteen, she receives the First Harmony Prize of the Conservatory from Francis Poulenc himself; on this occasion, he tells her that at least ten more years of unremitting work and ascetic life will be necessary to – maybe – aspire to a career as a composer. She then pictures herself living like the Carmelite nuns at the Fontenay Abbey and this sentence cuts short her musical career, a future planned as a tribute to her mother. Andrée therefore decides to satisfy her curiosity another way.

“What can one do when one did not go to school and is a musician who stopped playing music?”

she asks her grandmother, Madeleine Saint-René Taillandier, “ice queen and socialite” president of the literary prize Fémina. “Nothing except messenger.” Taking her grandmother’s advice, Andrée starts working as a messenger for Femina magazine. While taking care of all the dirty little jobs of the office, she observes with a sharp eye the social theatre which takes place during meetings.

For more than thirty years, the Studio, established by Andrée Putman, suggests a singular approach, a way of defining new stakes, an original way to understand objects and spaces, their meaning and their use.

“My mother imagined an alphabet from which we create our own words “ entrusted Olivia Putman to describe the activities of the agency of interior design. A Studio which has known, over the years, how to impose constancy and a recognizable signature.

In 2007, at the request of Andrée Putman, her daughter Olivia becomes the artistic director of the Studio. With a coherent vision of our new lifestyle she impulses the artistic line of the projects.

“Aware of today’s challenges, of our environmental liability, shaped by ancient know-how, I am lucky to create new settings for our speed lives.”

The work of interior architects, designers and engineers is coupled with a strategy and communication department that follows and defends the Studio’s interventions. It is in this cross-sectional and harmonious dynamic that we implement original solutions of arrangement, product development and brand support. In 2007, at the request of Andrée Putman, her daughter Olivia becomes the artistic director of the Studio. With a coherent vision of our new lifestyle she impulses the artistic line of the projects.

“Aware of today’s challenges, of our environmental liability, shaped by ancient know-how, I am lucky to create new settings for our speed lives.”

“I enjoy supporting brands which value their history while they are willing to take their customers towards new horizons.” states Olivia Putman.

The international fame of the Studio enables to establish partnerships with customers all around the world. Thus hotels in New York, Hong-Kong or Paris for Ritz-Carlton, Accor, Sheraton, were signed. The versatility and experienced know-how of the Studio Putman are also acclaimed for the realization of head quarters, commercial spaces and private residences, as well as for numerous original creations of objects and collections for prestigious brands, such as Christofle, Lalique, Poltrona Frau or Nespresso.