The Story Behind Athena Calderone’s First Standalone Furniture Collection

Athena Calderone has been working at the intersection of fashion, food, and design for years, building a taste empire through her lifestyle platform EyeSwoon and two books, including a James Beard Award-winning beautiful chef), as well as a critically acclaimed interior design practice. (Her new Tribeca apartment was featured on the cover of Architectural Digest in March.)

Now, with the debut of Studio Athena Calderone Assembler 1— a 14-piece furniture and lighting suite unveiled exclusively at The Future Perfect in New York — she’s arrived in a completely new place. Or rather, she was always heading somewhere.

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Drawing on the experience of French decorative arts design, Assembler 1 is a study of importance and proportion. High-gloss wood, varnish, parchment and nickel elements coexist harmoniously, evoking fond memories of the past. Calderone, whose first foray into furniture design was with Crate & Barrel, likened the process of creating the collection to learning a new language. “This is the first time that my studio actually has the drawings, has the scale, has the little iterations and changes that have happened over the past two years [of development],” she said.