The sounds of a trio playing jazz riffs, raindrops falling, and an occasional “magnifique” or “oui oui,” plus the scent of Frenchmen wearing expensive cologne filtered through the crowd at the fête to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Roche Bobois in Washington, DC.
Sacha Lakic, who designed a new collection for Roche Bobois called Speed Up, flew in from Paris to mingle with the 250 guests who attended the bash that was co-sponsored by Washington Spaces.
“He’s showing how technology can be brought into modern living,” David Zein, vice president of Roche Bobois Washington, DC, says of Lakic’s avant-garde designs. “The rules have totally exploded. This allows you to bring things from the traditional into the contemporary and vice versa.”
Lakic, who had a passion for cars as a child and who has designed Peugeots among other automobiles, integrates ideas of speed and technology into his furniture designs. One streamlined dining table, for instance, is made of fiberglass and carbon fiber so it can be both very slender and very strong. He designed light cantilevered chairs, too. “When I’m creating things, I try to remove material and not add. It’s very important that things are as pure and light as possible,” Lakic says.
In addition to their Les Contemporains collection, Roche Bobois also carries Les Voyages, which is influenced by the Far East and Africa, and Les Provinçiales, a reinterpretation of 18th and 19th century French antiques.
Giovanni, a gentleman who has been a Roche Bobois customer for 15 years, is partial to Les Provinçiales. He’s furnished three apartments in Chevy Chase and one in Lima, Peru with Roche Bobois furniture. Once he had an armoire custom made for his TV and it was too big to carry into his apartment. So Guillaume de Decker, manager of Roche Bobois Washington, DC, had a crane lift the armoire four floors to deliver it. “They made it happen,” Giovanni says.
