Why India Mahdavi is in the Design 100

India Mahdavi’s route to design ran through architecture, furniture and graphic design — training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then at Parsons and the School of Visual Arts in New York — before seven years as artistic director for Christian Liaigre. Iranian-born and raised between the United States, Germany and France, she opened her own Paris studio in 2000, developing a signature that is unmistakably hers: flat, saturated colour applied with the confidence of someone who never treats a room as neutral territory.

That signature has travelled well beyond interiors, into furniture, objects and collaborations with brands from Louis Vuitton to Ladurée, whose Los Angeles, Tokyo and Geneva outposts she gave the same pastel treatment. Her best-known commission is The Gallery at Sketch in London, reworked twice — first in candy pink for a wall of David Shrigley drawings, then in yellow alongside site-specific work by Yinka Shonibare — and both times identified almost entirely with her hand.