August 31, 2025 | DESIGN & INTERIORS
JÉRÔME BUGARA
LUXURY LIES in PRECISION and SIMPLICITY
words Onur Basturk
portrait photo Stéphane de Bourgies
product photos Jérôme Bugara Éditions
As Paris Design Week 2025 celebrates its 15th edition with a rich program of exhibitions across the city, French designer Jérôme Bugara opens a new private showroom in Versailles. Conceived as an intimate space, it brings together his signature works and latest creations — pieces imagined as inhabited sculptures, where craftsmanship, emotion, and timeless lines converge. With this new chapter, we turn to Jérôme Bugara, who reveals the inspirations, collaborations, and philosophy shaping his world of design.
A UNIVERSE BROUGHT TO LIFE IN VERSAILLES
What does the opening of your showroom in Versailles represent for you and your brand?
The opening of this showroom is, for us, much more than just an exhibition space: it is a true illumination of our universe. It is the place where the creativity, craftsmanship, and passion we put into each of our pieces fully come to life. We want to invite our clients to cross a threshold that is not only physical, but also one that opens onto our history and inspirations. They discover our creations not as static objects, but as fragments of life, carrying both soul and meaning. Many of our pieces bear the names of my children or my wife, who is also my partner. This showroom is the perfect setting to express this familial and personal dimension: each piece tells a story, and each collection reflects a lived emotion.
For the Versailles collection, you collaborated with masters such as Rémy Garnier. What do these partnerships bring to your work?
These collaborations are essential to me, as they embody French excellence. Rémy Garnier, for example, is one of those masters whose ancestral savoir-faire is truly unique. The Versailles collection, which carries such a symbolic name, required extreme precision and a perfect command of traditional techniques. Only an artisan of this caliber could give it its full nobility. I deeply love working with these houses that perpetuate centuries-old gestures. This also guided my choice to collaborate with the Jean Bracq lace-making workshop for the May wine cellar. Their period looms, among the last still in operation, allow the creation of pieces of extraordinary rarity and finesse. These partnerships represent the alliance between my contemporary vision and the expert hand of artisans, giving birth to timeless works.
You say you want to “reinvent the art of furniture.” What, in your opinion, most deserves to be reinvented today?
Furniture is everywhere, and the market is saturated with ephemeral or standardized objects. What I seek to reinvent is the idea that furniture can be more than just a functional object. I want to create pieces that transcend time, both timeless and profoundly contemporary. Pieces that engage in dialogue with collective memory and evoke strong, almost cinematic worlds. La Baïne, for example, was born from observing the powerful currents of the Atlantic: one feels both its raw energy and the poetry of nature. Conversely, Sahara invites introspection and contemplation of desert immensity. Reinventing the art of furniture means reintroducing into each creation an element of dream and emotion.
BALANCING HERITAGE AND MODERNITY
Your work connects French decorative heritage with modernity. How do you make these two universes coexist?
French decorative heritage and modernity are not opposites; they nourish one another. French decorative art is a universal language, rich in symbols, details, and techniques, which I find fascinating. Modernity, on the other hand, offers me the freedom to adapt these codes to our time, our lifestyles, and new technologies. This is the alchemy I seek: respect for traditions, gestures, and materials, combined with an organic, fluid, more refined vision. One cannot exist without the other in my work, for it is from their dialogue that balance is born.
For you, luxury resides in precision, simplicity, and excellence. How does this vision align with today’s culture of consumption?
Today, consumption is often fast, standardized, and driven by immediate need. But paradoxically, the faster this world goes, the more people seek to slow down and return to the essential. For me, luxury is not about accumulation or ostentation. True luxury lies in the time devoted to creation, in the attention paid to invisible details, in a flawless finish that makes all the difference. It is also found in simplicity: a pure line, a sensual curve, a noble material worked with respect. My vision of luxury therefore stands in opposition to mass consumption: it belongs to the realm of rarity, precision, and sincerity. In a world saturated with objects, true luxury is owning a unique piece with both soul and story.
Onyx, marble, rock crystal, rare woods… Do materials guide your ideas, or do your ideas call for the materials?
The two are inseparable. Sometimes, the material is an obvious choice that imposes itself on me: this was the case for Everest, imagined from a block of marble, sculpted from the mass like a mountain. The material guided me, inspiring the form. At other times, it is the idea that precedes the material. Edward, for example, was first conceived as a unique piece for a client, before being produced in different materials – marble, onyx, raku. Each material gives it a different personality, a new resonance. I love this freedom of allowing either the idea or the material to take the lead.
