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With his 60th birthday looming, Belgian architect and designer Vincent Van Duysen was gripped by an “introspective mood” when hatching his inaugural (and very personal) collection of furniture for Spanish houseware behemoth Zara Home. This contemplative mindset prompted Van Duysen to plunge back into his more than three decades worth of archives, reconsidering his designs of yore with fresh perspective. “It was a lesson,” he tells AD PRO. “How could I precisely describe my style and determine what people are interested in from me for their homes? I had to look backwards.”
Now, a few months past his milestone birthday, the architect and designer is pleased to unveil Zara Home + by Vincent Van Duysen, which debuts online and in select global flagships on June 30, with a slew of tactile, elegant selections for the living room. Van Duysen, who imagines meditative, minimalist interiors and products for the likes of Flos, Kettal, Kvadrat, and Molteni&C | Dada, was enamored with the idea of democratizing his work through a collaboration with such a prominent, affordable brand.
“I’ve spent 35 years building up my name, my career, my aesthetics, and my DNA, and I’m here to inspire, so that anybody in the world can buy beautifully crafted furniture at a decent price from me.” Van Duysen elaborates. “I want my pieces to be in everyone’s home, no matter who they are and no matter at what scale.”
Marta Ortega, chair of Zara Home’s parent company, Inditex, had long been a fan of Van Duysen’s creations (his monograph has made a cameo at the stores), but when she and her colleagues visited him in Antwerp, a friendship sparked immediately. “They came to my house, they met my partner, they saw my dogs. It was very human,” says Van Duysen, who later followed up with a trip to Zara headquarters in Spain.
Van Duysen values authentic connections as much as quality, an aspect of the series that he is overwhelmingly impressed with. There is a significant level of detail rendered in the objects, which embrace earthy materials such as Campaspero limestone and linen, showcase notable joinery skills, and possess “understated, simple, recognizable forms,” as Van Duysen puts it.
In the line are comfy bouclé sofas and armchairs imbued with British sensibilities, sleek stools with subtly curved seats, and sculptural side tables fashioned out of heat-treated Thermo-Ash. Along with leather-adorned, oak lounge chairs, stark, low-slung coffee tables, and accent consoles, there are also graphic table lamps, accessories, and hand-knotted rugs that reference Van Duysen’s affinity for the herringbone pattern.
To achieve such a lineup, Van Duysen began by taking stock of his own abodes in Antwerp and Portugal to explore the materials, textures, and hues that define his oeuvre. “I started to pick out some items, revisited them, and made them even purer, stripping off anything excessive,” he says of the process. “There are also my bone colors, my warm browns, my dark greens, and my smoky grays that I took out of the palettes from my homes for the upholstery.”
As each reimagined mock-up was completed, it elicited the “feeling of coming home, which is actually the purpose,” Van Duysen points out. Currently, he is enmeshed in plans for the year’s second release with Zara Home. Dropping in the fall, it will be devoted to dining room furniture—and once again, the past will be at the forefront.
“We all have our basics, these essential elements that live in a room. It was nice to look at them from the beginning and see what I was doing 30 years ago,” Van Duysen says, “but I never stepped away from where I initially started. I’ve always been consistent.”
