Longchamp and Pierre Renart Unveil Sculptural Furniture Pieces at Milan Design Week
Where fluid elegance meets artisanal mastery.
In an inspired crossover between fashion and design, Longchamp and French sculptor Pierre Renart have unveiled a capsule of original furniture pieces that elegantly blur the boundaries between disciplines. Premiered at Milan Design Week 2025, the banquette Wave cuir (Wave leather bench) and a series of eight chaises Ruban (Ruban chairs) represent a seamless fusion of Longchamp’s storied leather savoir-faire with Renart’s poetic manipulation of wood.
For Longchamp’s Creative Director and General Manager Sophie Delafontaine, the collaboration is less a brand pivot than a natural extension of the Maison’s philosophy. “We’re not launching a furniture line,” she clarifies. “This is about celebrating craftsmanship in all its forms. Our work with Pierre embodies that mission—supporting artistic talent and bringing traditional know-how into new contexts.”
A Meeting of Minds — and Materials
The collaboration is the second between Longchamp and Renart, who first connected in 2021 through Maison Parisienne, a gallery that champions material-focused artisans. “What drew us to Pierre’s work was how he gives wood a kind of kinetic grace,” Delafontaine explains. “The movement, the elegance, the energy—it mirrors what we aim to express in our leather designs.”
This latest project flips the script slightly. It was Renart who approached Longchamp, proposing a union of their respective specialities: wood and leather. “I had been exploring the possibilities of combining these materials for years,” says Renart, “but never had the chance to bring it to life at this scale. With Longchamp, everything aligned. Not just in terms of craft, but values—this is a family-run company, and you feel that sense of continuity and care in every interaction.”
Engineering Meets Art
The Wave banquette is a feat of sculptural engineering, crafted from a continuous 7-metre walnut ribbon, seamlessly veneered for strength and fluidity. “The technical challenge was immense,” Renart admits. “Walnut doesn’t come in lengths like that. It’s a jigsaw of precision—matching colour, grain, and tension to create the illusion of a single, flowing form.” Wrapping the piece is a buttery-soft Longchamp cowhide, specially selected for its suppleness to follow the bench’s sinuous curves.
The Ruban chairs echo the same sensibility—minimal yet dynamic, organic yet precise. Delafontaine was hands-on throughout the process, advising on finishes and challenging Renart to preserve his signature lightness even when layering in leather. “I didn’t want the leather to weigh the pieces down. I asked Pierre to keep that sense of movement, of a line drawn in space,” she says.
That line—clean, curved, and confident—is what connects these works not only to each other, but to a previous piece: Renart’s Wave coffee table, first seen at Maison Parisienne. While not officially part of a set, the new creations riff off that same visual language. “We wanted to magnify Pierre’s technique,” Delafontaine says. “Not to alter it, but to elevate it through the lens of our leather expertise.”
What Comes Next
As for what’s next, both Longchamp and Renart are keeping the future open-ended. “This was never about entering the furniture market,” Delafontaine reiterates. “It’s about spotlighting creators who push the limits of material and form.” To that end, Longchamp is already preparing a new collaboration with Paris-based ceramicist Constantin Riant, due to debut this autumn.
Renart, meanwhile, returns to his studio in Blois, energised by the exposure Milan Design Week has afforded him. “This partnership has been a turning point,” he says. “Creatively, professionally—it’s opened new paths I’m excited to explore.”
The banquette Wave cuir and Ruban chairs are more than objects. They are dialogues between tradition and experimentation, between leather and wood, between two French creatives devoted to the art of movement—be it in fashion or form.
