Maison & Objet - Spring 2024

Fair number five of the season. Paris based Maison&Objet. The interior design fair with everything from small gadgets to decoration and furniture design. And lets be clear. Maison&Objet won. You can not compete in fairs, but if you would, then Maison&Objet would win. Out of all seven (or eight) fairs I saw, this was the best one.

Let me elaborate on the winning thing. Arriving at the fair on the first day it opened, this fair was packed. Packed! There were so many people here that you basically couldn’t get lunch.

Packed with people and packed with brands. And packed with content.

Yes, also here people were commenting on brands that were missing – but to a much lesser extent than at the other fairs. Here you could also see how older brands would come back. Like Baccarat or Royal Delft.

Every brand owner I met at the fair, the ones that didn’t exhibit, said that they wished they had booked a slot at the fair. I expect Maison&Objet in September to be fully booked.

Of course there is a head-to-head competion with Ambiente. We will talk about Ambiente later. But these two fairs show clearly that the bigger fairs are growning and the smaller are struggling.

My biggest surprise was that M&O only had 33 Swedish exhibitors while Ambiente had 55 exhibitors. Almost double.

Numbers. 2 500 exhibitors. 70 000 unique visitors (or almost 100 000 visits, it depends on how you count).

So, with thousands of brands and things to see, you will of course notice trends. I did a video report together with Elisabetta at Italianbark and you can watch our 20 minute report here.

Lets do this.

Trend 1 – frogs or boots?

As I have said before, I am seeing a hint of a frog trend. It might be early or nothing at all…

But to my surprise I actually saw plenty of boots too. Are we seeing a boot trend coming up?

Trend 2 – happy

One of the major outtakes from Maison&Objet was how playful and happy a lot of things were. Of course I talk about joyful colour but also an easiness to it. Casual and play. There are no strict rules. You just add things you thing are fun. Here from Lladro a lamp by Luca Nichetto and to me this is about stacking shapes on top of eachother.

A fish that also is a glass.

Outdoor pouffs

More stacking. I think these candle holder will be HUGE.

Textiles of course.

Trend 3 – retro

Heritage is of course important and I did like how Vista Alegre put old porcelaine stamps in the BOTTOM of the plates. Playful and retro.

But this retro trend is absolutely more colourful. Here Popus Edition

Jonathan Adler

And of course you have the exhibitor All’Origine that sells proper vintage at the fair.

Fonts are getting retro

And in the city. Old patterns coming back but with stringer colours.

Trend 4 – emerald

I will try to push three colour trends that stood out. First out emerald.

This is a green with lots of blue in it. A strong colour. Not really naturalistic. And all these three colour are strong. Sometimes the work well together.

Like here. A room with emerald green and colour trend two – purple.

At Maison Dada. The head in the middle is new.

Just tried to capture the colour of the wall.

Hübsch

Broste Copenhagen

Polspotten

Pulpo

Sahco

The new tableware from Hermes that was launched in the city.

Trend 5 – purple

As mentioned already at Heimtextil, purple and lilac is something people talk about. And I saw a lot at Maison&Objet too. And the shade varies. Sometimes it is more blue, sometimes more red.