Christophe Pillet is a true gentleman who tells his story with both lightness and seriousness, always with a hint of a smile and persistent energy. Despite belonging to the “design lifetime senators” category, his vitality shows no sign of waning. Like a classic 70s Prog music piece, Christophe Pillet’s journey embodies the imaginative equation “productive calm-attraction-speed = execution”, with long and intense solos (Memphis, Branzi, De Lucchi, Starck, and Bedin) that shaped him first in product design and then in the interior world. Today, splitting his life between Paris and Les Baux de Provence, Pillet continues to prioritize personal relationships over professional ones, always in search of that chemistry that sparks creativity.
Your studies initially focused on art. When and how did your path change direction?
Chance has played a significant role in my professional life. I wanted to be a musician, but I ended up in an art school in Nice to please my parents, who didn’t like hearing me play music all night and then relax on the beach all day. During that time, I read various magazines and discovered Memphis. For a musician, seeing that colorful and radical design seemed like rock ‘n’ roll was an astonishing discovery.


I instantly felt a powerful, direct connection, even though I knew nothing about design or Milan. A professor of mine, noticing my curiosity, mentioned a Memphis school opening in Milan (the Domus Academy) in 1986. One afternoon, I set out to see it. I just wanted to meet them, breathe in their atmosphere, and see the protagonists of a cultural movement that I found electrifying.
The Memphis Case: You arrive in Milan and…
I met Andrea Branzi. We chatted for an hour, and I showed him some of my drawings, which he found charming and interesting, and he offered me a scholarship, which I immediately accepted. In one year at the Domus Academy, I met amazing people you might not encounter in a lifetime: Gianfranco Ferré, Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Alessandro Mendini, to name a few. It was an unstoppable wave of creativity, but also of method and genuine design culture.

The Michele De Lucchi Case
De Lucchi let me into his studio, perhaps in desperation from seeing me practically sleeping outside his door. Then, like a true gentleman, he introduced me to his friends, who welcomed me and helped me grow. After the first year, I was already highly involved and decided to apply what I had learned. During that period, Michele De Lucchi was incredibly generous with me and started giving me projects to work on: the first one, I remember well, was a graphic design project on some laminates for Abet. Later, he found me a job with Carlotta Bevilacqua and then with Martine Bedin. Even today, it’s remarkable to see my name among the authors of Memphis, but back then, all assistants of famous architects had opportunities to design their own works, with a lot of discipline but also the freedom to create.

The Starck Case
I was in Milan with Martine Bedin, happy, when one day I read an ad in Liberation where Starck was looking for collaborators. I called, and Starck’s wife invited me to meet him the next day at 9 a.m. at Café Costa in Paris. Naturally, I went; Starck told me, “Great, let’s start the day after tomorrow.” So, within 24 hours, I returned to Paris from Milan. I thought I’d stay for three weeks, but it turned into five years. I spent five wonderful years with Starck, traveling the world, unforgettable not just professionally. My professional journey has always been like this; I’ve never had a specific plan to follow. I’ve followed passion and instinct and have been objectively very fortunate.
Has your way of “approaching things” also occurred in the project world?
The project world began with Starck and developed in Italy. I approached this world with the best tool I had at my disposal at that time: comics, my youthful passion. I lacked experience in interior design, but in the ’80s, the “drawn and somewhat imaginative” graphic representation worked (thankfully), and Starck entrusted me with many projects. The clients were pleased with how I handled things after the design phase, and with my “comics,” I managed to succeed.



Your art directions: Was or is it a role where you feel comfortable?
Art direction is a category of its own: you have to be within the company’s system you’re directing while simultaneously being outside of it, close yet distant, involved yet detached. This seemingly impossible ubiquity is challenging, but it allows you to be respectful of history while free to see new perspectives to nurture that history.


You need to craft a narrative that isn’t yours yet must be understandable and compelling. Ultimately, that story becomes a bit yours if you manage to maintain the correct and constant tension between the company and yourself. It happened with Lacoste for 10 years, it’s happening now with Ethimo, for instance, even though I’m not their art director, and it’s about to happen with Kreoo.
Who is someone you haven’t encountered in your life?
I have always made my choices based on the people who offered to work with me, more rarely based on the subject proposed to me. The human adventure of a project is more important to me than the nature of the object to be designed. Since I came into the design world by chance, I have always thought, a bit like a tourist (but a serious and rigorous tourist…), that the beautiful moments spent in this world were worth more than the glory of the created object. So, despite getting older, I hope to be part of the next “wave” of design.

