The Collectors' Apartment in the Unapologetically Eclectic Style the Founder of LA.M Studio

I am Léonie Alma Mason, 34 years old, born in Switzerland; I grew up in Paris then in Germany. I’m an interior architect, a designer, and soon, I will start producing furniture.

I was born in Pau, and I was lucky enough to grow up in Bearn. I’ve lived in Paris for fifteen years and work in construction project management. I love fine food and drink and the fine things in life, just as Léonie does. We are also collectors and enjoy sharing this passion. I myself am an avid motorsport and rugby fan.

After dreaming of being a contortionist, then a dancer at the Crazy Horse, and then taking an interest in sewing when I was 15, I was destined to study literature after taking my Baccalaureate L in Germany. I finally followed my instincts a week before the start of the school year and started a foundation course for art schools (Penninghen & les Ateliers de Sèvres). I got into the famous Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design of London in the “object design” section, but gave it up a week before for love of my boyfriend at the time and stayed in Paris. I spent five years of pure happiness at the Camondo school, which enabled me to find the job that comes to me most naturally: interior designer. By chance, it clicked.

The desire to be free but also responsible! I realised quite quickly that it was impossible for me to depend on anyone else. I didn’t necessarily have a vision for the development of the studio, apart from an enormous amount of energy which I put into doing, learning this profession, rubbing shoulders with its realities, meeting the craftspeople, designing lots of different places that could really come to life.

I’m lucky enough to come from a family of particularly erudite, inquisitive and open-minded art historians. Our living spaces already reflected an eclectic mix of contemporary art, stylish furniture and all the kinds of objects that help develop a broad imagination. We even had the opportunity to live for a few years at the National Museum of African and Oceanic Art, where I visited the crocodiles and drew the exotic fish in the aquarium. So travel has played a very important role in my relationship with beauty. The richness of the patterns, marbles and mosaics in Italian churches, the poetry of the ancient ruins on the Turkish border, the wilderness of Morocco where my mother was born, India, Russia, the United States… this open world full of possibilities has nourished me a lot. The influence of my grandmother, the artist Odile Mir. With her, we were able to indulge in wonderful creative activities such as sculpting with salt dough and clay, and drawing, too. It was a more tangible entry, in a way, into the creative world.

I’m a child of the 11th arrondissement, I like the diversity and cultural mix, the brothel in the street, but we had to move closer to the west of Paris to set up a place to live for our blended family and the architecture studio. We viewed lots of apartments before finding this one which is quite large, pleasant and bright with its big terrace. From a loft with a very contemporary glass roof, we went to an old Haussmannian classic with parquet floors, mouldings and a broken tile floor. We like change!

No structural changes; it’s a rental. We slotted ourselves into these spaces naturally to make them our own. In addition to the furniture we already had, I designed several custom-made pieces to go in here, such as a very large oak and blue linen velvet sofa, a chest of drawers whose design was based on a terrazzo table found at Emmaüs, and a long, narrow dining room table to accommodate the dinners we love to organise. We also hunted down a few pieces from flea markets and other places and, of course, chairs and lamps that my grandmother designed in the 1970s. I painted the whole kitchen, which looked like an old cottage, to bring out the colours of the tiles, accessorised the old mosaic bathroom and decided that the toilet would be the room for learning foreign languages. As far as display is concerned, the position of the largest works is self-evident. Then I play with the alignments between them, but also with the existing architectural elements! I make themed arrangements to create conversations between the works. The Gipsies at the Sea by Jean Dieuzaide are facing the Galatea; they are all jumping into the water under the serious gaze of two Indian women. This is an old photo found in Kerala. Nobuyoshi Araki’s Polaroid Lys opens the erotic setting in the bedroom next to a print of a woman making love to an octopus under the aegis of an X by Bram van Velde. The presence of books is also essential for me: a catalogue of a particularly striking exhibition, the whole series of philosophical books illustrated by the French-Swiss Frédéric Pajak, Les Rencontres d’Arles, etc.

Luxurious materials without being flashy. The curtains are in pink silk, the same one I used for a traditional Indian sari, the ikat cushions were bought at the bazaar in Istanbul, the blue linen velvet chosen to accompany the colours of a painting, the stained oak to recall the classic vocabulary of this flat, a lava stone table for which I specifically chose the very soft and warm ochre colour, and then lots of mirrors, everywhere, to bring in the light and create new perspectives.