Andrée Putman

Dubbed “the vestal of the immaculate conceptual” by the French daily newspaper “Le Monde,” Andrée Putman began her career with a notable achievement, bringing art into Prisunic while working for the French department store’s design and style departments. In the 1980s, Putman produced furniture of the 1930s great modern designers who were not well known to the general public at the time, like Eileen Gray, Jean-Michel Franck, Pierre Chareau, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Mario Fortuny and others from oblivion. In New York, Putman introduced a modern vision for hotels by creating the first boutique hotel, Morgans, in 1984. She also designed stores all over the world for the great names in fashion, hotels and restaurants, and offices for government ministers and captains of industry. Her successes encouraged her natural penchant for eclecticism; she has worked on everything from the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Rouen, the CAPC (Contemporary Art Museum) in Bordeaux and the Guggenheim to the World’s Fair in Seville, film sets for Peter Greenaway and Air France’s Concorde.