Olivia Putman

Olivia Putman is a French designer born in 1964 in Paris. She is the daughter of internationally renowned interior decorator and designer Andrée Putman. Olivia Putman works in the field of interior architecture, scenography and design. In 2007, Andrée Putman, her mother, entrusted her with the artistic direction of Studio Putman. She began her career in the legendary agency by renovating the Morgans Hotel in New York, as her mother imagined.
She soon designed a line of outdoor furniture for Fermob, a collection of glasses and rugs for Toulemonde Bochart, furniture for Silvera, organised the scenography for the Madeleine Vionnet exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, a collection of fabrics for Pierre Frey… and in 2011 ensured the artistic direction of maison Lalique. So many universes in which she expresses her conception of luxury, which lies more in the correctness of things than in their brilliance.
“Drucker is above all a dazzling of colours, like in a film by Jacques Demy,” she says. “When I was very young, I fell under the charm of the combination of raw and rough rattan with plastic-coated and bright threads. Subsequently, I felt the desire to find out about the know-how of this maison which must absolutely be valued and protected. If only to defend the values it embodies, its art, its identity, obsession with quality and respect for creation.”
Before joining Studio Putman in 2007, the young woman, then a landscape designer, often went to the Gilocourt factory to choose seats and furniture to brighten up the gardens of clients who had entrusted her with their property. “Paris, its bistros and café terraces come to mind immediately when I think of Drucker chairs,” she continues. “Their reassuring forms belong to our collective memory. Each creation is a kind of link between yesterday and today. I’ve owned one for over ten years, and even today it’s like new.” For this project, the designer focused above all on the optimisation of production costs, so that her creations are sold at an affordable price. “I like to design objects intended for daily use, and which blend in any type of atmosphere. I imagine this chair on a terrace with a view of the Alpilles as well as in a very contemporary kitchen.”
Maison Drucker had already made a chair for Andrée Putman, one that she named “Rive Gauche” (Left Bank). If Olivia Putman named her chair “Rive droite” (Right Bank), directly inspired by her mother’s chair, it is not only to pay homage to her, but above all to evoke a change in life, or in the river bank. “My family was very Rive Gauche,” she confirms, “and that is the name, Left Bank, that my mother, Andrée Putman, gave to the chair she designed for Maison Drucker. I discovered the Right Bank only a few years ago, and I have completely embraced it since.”