After discovering postmodernism while studying industrial design at Virginia Tech, Sophie Collé learned how to make furniture imbued with a sense of humor. Though the objects that come from her young Brooklyn-based practice are consistently fun and personality-driven, Collé is serious about setting an example for the industry: Each purchase benefits a cause of the customer’s choosing, helping illustrate design’s power to effect positive change.
After discovering postmodernism while studying industrial design at Virginia Tech, Sophie Collé learned how to make furniture imbued with a sense of humor. Though the objects that come from her young Brooklyn-based practice are consistently fun and personality-driven, Collé is serious about setting an example for the industry: Each purchase benefits a cause of the customer’s choosing, helping illustrate design’s power to effect positive change.
Describe what you make: I make furniture that (hopefully) makes people smile. I used to be terribly afraid of any color, and all of my design school projects were birch wood and untreated stainless steel. Once I discovered postmodernism, I realized that I had forgotten how to play—like many adults do. Returning to the color, geometry, and humor of my childhood absolutely transformed the work I was producing overnight. Lastly, I hope to continue designing furniture that makes my father go, “that won’t work.” And then it does!
Chair 02 - "Miss Miami"…
Plant Stands - "Ladies in Purple" …
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: My design practice is still so green and new that everything I make still feels exciting and like the most important thing ever. I’m still in a phase of huge discoveries, mistakes, and endless iterations. If I look back, though, I would probably have to say the pyramid-shaped tea kettle that I drew three weeks into my first-year design studio. I didn’t ever draw an electrical cord on my sketch because I didn’t want to disrupt its flawless form. My professor instantly hated me. At the time, I had no idea that it was totally Alessi-inspired, so that’s pretty cute.
More specifically, another first-year project was analyzing and dissecting an object for an entire month until one could no longer find newer and more abstracted ways to represent it. My 30 sketches were of Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Chair, and from then on I was sold on furniture. And finally, I just built a plant stand duo that was donated to Adrian Manuel’s Queer Art + Design Raffle. The entire raffle raised more than $25,000 for organizations offering tangible aid to trans people. Being included in that was a huge honor.
Describe the problem your work solves: I often find this question to be a double-edged sword because an exceedingly large portion of the design industry thrives due to income inequality. This is something that dawned on me when I walked onto my first Upper East Side construction site. Design can be pretty superfluous at times, and that’s a stigma and a precedent I hope to combat as I develop my practice, despite my designs being lighthearted and playful.
Both the professional world and the academic world have a ton of catching up to do, both in terms of living representation, and physically rewriting texts and references. For my own personal due diligence, I try to spend as much time as I can researching the systemic exclusion of female-identifying and queer members of the art world.
In my four years of undergrad, I had only three female design professors, and not one single queer professor, resulting in a lack of differing narratives, perspectives, and experiences. I could go on and on about the countless sexist remarks from the head of the department, my peers, the woodshop guys, and really any male-identifying person in the studio building where I got my education, but those experiences are not unique to me or any single marginalized person in the design world.
After graduation, I worked at a private contemporary art museum that was gaining major traction in the news. Seeing the intersection of art and commerce behind the scenes really shattered any notions I had that museums are cultural patronage, here to serve and educate the public, rather than what they often are—financial investments for wealthy board members and donors. Learning that most art and design institutions, firms, and studios still offer unpaid internships was the rudest awakening of all.
Table 01 - "Miss Rietveld"…
Chair 03 - "Miss Eden"…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve attempted to channel all of these discoveries into a new project. Ultimately, I started my little furniture enterprise to raise money for organizations affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement or any social justice cause that the client felt to be particularly meaningful at the height of the protests in early June. I created a catalog of basic designs, posted it on Instagram, and started offering custom colorways and specs. I’ve been working on these pieces in my spare time and have been posting all of my progress, which has proven to be an incredibly active online campaign.
I’m so humbled that people have allowed me to do what I love, all while redirecting their funds to people and groups that need it. The vast world of crowdfunding links, organizations, persons to donate to has become an alarming wake-up call to open up my wallet. Design and designers should enact social change, even if at a microscopic scale. That, more than anything else, has been my greatest lesson of the past year.
Describe the project you are working on now: For the foreseeable future, I’ll be executing the majority of custom orders that were placed within the past few weeks. A large portion of my time is also keeping up-to-date with donation receipts for clients and making sure that organizations such as the Okra Project and the Loveland Therapy Fund are being continuously supported.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: I’m building so many new pieces right now that I’d love to put together some sort of physical lookbook to show people what their donations resulted in. Other than that, I don’t have anything firm lined up. I would, however, love to partake in more raffles or online design exhibitions while the pandemic endures.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: My cat, Miss Cordelia Basketball, and any TV show that I’ve already watched at least twice for background noise.
What you do when you’re not working: My roommate and I just re-signed our lease, so these days that project is taking up the other 50 percent of my time. We’re doing minor renovations and big-time redecorating, which I’m really looking forward to.
Sophie Collé…
Plant Stands 01, 02 - "Miss Germs"…
Sources of creative envy: My mother. Additionally: Lady Gaga, Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, Louise Bourgeois, Laurinda Spear of Arquitectonica, Isamu Noguchi, Martha Schwartz, Gae Aulenti, Cini Boeri, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Royère, Leah Ring, Ettorre Sottsass (and anyone else in the Memphis group), Peter Shire, Inga Muscio, Rebecca Solnit, the Guerrilla Girls, Nanda Vigo, Rene Magritte, Francois Boucher, Iris Van Herpen, Alexander Calder, Alma Thomas, David Hockney, Alma Buscher, Marianne Brandt, Studiosessanta5, any visual project that Solange has touched, and whoever designed and built the first corinthian column. Finally, some of my best collaborators in New York: Sara Moinian, Jack Foreman, and Cara Bachman. I could literally fill a book with how much I envy them and their wisdoms.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Donald J. Tr*mp.
Concrete or marble? Marble, unless we’re talking Tadao Ando concrete.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse with prewar characteristics, original hardwood floor, and postmodern furniture.
Remember or forget? Remember, except for all the heinous designs I thought were genius in 2015.
Aliens or ghosts? Aliens. Think of the furniture they make!
Dark or light? Both, i.e. “In Praise of Shadows,” Jun’ichiro Tanizaki.
