Collector Walls: One Chair, Two Fashion Designers
Yves Saint Laurent and Kim Jones, both of whom made their names at Dior, share another thing in common: an elegant Armand-Albert Rateau fauteuil.
T he most precious objects owned by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were housed within their grand salon at 55 Rue de Babylone in Paris. In a moody, wood-paneled room originally designed by Christian Bérard and Jean-Michel Frank in the 1920s, paintings by Mondrian, Brancusi and Picasso hung alongside some of the finest creations from the art deco period. At the center of the salon, two chairs stood side by side. One was Eileen Gray’s “Dragons” chair, which fetched a staggering $28 million at auction in 2009, becoming the most expensive chair ever sold. Beside it—quieter, but by no means inferior—was a circa-1920 armchair by Armand-Albert Rateau, one of the most enigmatic talents of 20th-century French design. Rateau is often associated with fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, whose Paris apartment he lavishly decorated in the mid-1920s.
On first glance, the chair is modest compared to the opulence of Rateau’s other creations. Closer inspection reveals that the legs are, in fact, hand-carved into the form of exquisite winged birds, washed over with a jade-green coating. It’s no surprise that Saint Laurent was drawn to this Rateau chair in particular, given his fascination with animal-inspired pieces. “I have a passion for objects depicting birds and snakes, but in real life, these animals scare me,” he once confessed.
In 2009, as the estate of Saint Laurent and Bergé was sold in Paris, the London-born fashion designer Kim Jones followed eagerly from afar. At the time, Jones was the creative director at U.K. men’s label Alfred Dunhill and relatively unknown to the wider public. “I couldn’t afford any of the pieces. I was young. But I was obsessed with their collection,” he tells me as we sit in his North London home. What Jones could not have known back then was that, within a decade, he would step into one of the most storied roles in fashion at Dior, following in the footsteps of Saint Laurent, who led the house’s couture atelier in an earlier era.
Jones joined Dior in 2018 and immersed himself in the house’s archives, drawn to the years shaped by Saint Laurent’s influence. His fascination with Saint Laurent—both as a designer and as a collector—deepened. By this time, Jones was one of the foremost figures in contemporary fashion and had the means to build the art and design collection he had always dreamed of.
Soon enough, a message came across Jones’ desk at Dior: the Rateau chair from Rue de Babylone was available again. Jones did not hesitate. Though the two fashion designers never met in person—Saint Laurent died in 2008—they were now linked not only by their contributions to Dior, but also by a Rateau chair. (Jones left Dior earlier this year.)
These days, the chair resides in Jones’ home, a two-story concrete and glass structure hidden down a mews street in North London. It’s filled with objects that range from Virginia Woolf’s teapot (another obsession of Jones’ is the Bloomsbury Group) and a first edition of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” to a rare pair of Francis Bacon rugs created before the artist turned to painting (only seven exist today). Despite the sheer volume of art, objects, books and ephemera, Jones’ home is far from cluttered. He is a perfectionist. This is perhaps most evident in his library, where custom covers, designed by Jones himself, encase all of his first editions and rare books.
The Rateau chair sits just off the library, in a quiet secondary living room. It’s positioned beneath a small work by artist Tim Breuer, a student of Peter Doig’s, and surrounded by various objects from Jones’ extensive travels. Nearby, a Jean Prouvé cabinet with a green exterior happens to match the legs of the chair perfectly.
Jones’ cat, Dennis, is often found curled up on the chair. One would normally never let a pet near such a piece, but Jones is particularly adamant about living with the things he owns. “Of course I sit in it,” he says, laughing, when I ask if he ever uses the chair. Watching Dennis lounge there feels fitting. Saint Laurent famously kept his French bulldogs close, and they were often found perched on chairs throughout the Rue de Babylone apartment.
