Vive Le Luxe: Helene Aumont

By Donna Sapolin

Sitting astride one of the Dutch Friesian horses she owns, Helene Aumont trots through the vineyards near her ranch in Santa Ynez, California. It is early in the morning and she is taking some personal time before heading into the bustling office of her eponymous furniture design business, the Helene Aumont Collection, where she and three others will tackle custom orders from designers around the country seeking high-end wares that infuse their schemes with a refined European sensibility. Aumont slows her gait to a walk as a ray of light strikes a cluster of late harvest grapes, capturing her gaze. She scrutinizes their glowing yellow-tinged transparency and spare forms, relishing their organic perfection.

. .
To her the sunlight has transformed these fruits into objects of art and, like those she herself has created-55 elegant pieces of furniture ranging from tables, chairs, and desks to lighting, screens, and mirrors-they seem to celebrate material and composition. Her furnishings collection captures four key aesthetics. It contains a minimalist, functional line that emphasizes the pieces’ own construction and architecture; a bronze-based line with sculptural Diego Giacometti-like organic forms; a line of European-inspired reproductions; and a line that the designer describes as “Directoire with ‘40s flair”.

. .
Aumont’s daily ride gives her a chance to set aside the concerns of the three separate enterprises that engage her-designing for and running her furnishings company; rearing three children, two daughters, 14 and 26, and a son, 16; and, shaping spaces for three interior design clients per year. “In the morning, I look at nature and consciously or unconsciously absorb its messages,” she says.

“We’re surrounded by beauty. The only question is ‘are we seeing it’? A good designer doesn’t blink. Wherever I go, I grasp a detail, embed it in my brain and then use it for future pieces.”

. .
Aumont may be discovering inspiration everywhere but the molding memories of childhood hold the greatest sway over her designs. Her youth was lived out in a Parisian home occupied by three generations and filled with pieces of different styles and vintages that had been passed down over many years. They were anything but throwaway and reflected none of the public’s present penchant for sanitized, easy-wear goods unmarked by signs of wear. “In Europe, people really value what has been given to them,” says Aumont. “They don’t feel the need to get rid of things and start fresh over and over again.”

. .

.

It is her belief that one tends to try and recreate the deep-seated comforts of childhood when selecting and purchasing furniture. “I am strongly drawn by my personal heritage, things associated with my early years that evoke a soothing feeling of familiarity,” she says. Her attachment to the Directoire furniture of her grandparents’ bedroom, for example, endowed her with a life-long love of the style’s inherent sophistication and modernism and led her to rework the look in her Carlton line. Indeed, Aumont’s furnishings are all about taking old things and reworking them for contemporary times.

.
She launched her collection with three items-a desk with the silhouette of a drafting table, a bronze chandelier inspired by a northern Italian model, and a sculptural bronze console table. They were born of her inability to find items for her interior design clients that had an old-world appearance and could stand up to today’s usages while providing heirloom quality at a reasonable price.

.

“One of my clients was a serious art collector and huge fan of Diego Giacometti,” she says. “But he could not acquire one of his works,” recalls the designer. “So I created the Negresco Console.” Gradually, the lines expanded further, incorporating various types of pieces that lent it greater coherence, and other showrooms began representing it. Today, seven different showrooms represent Aumont’s wares.

“I embrace things that are classic and timeless.”

“I don’t care about trends and so I ignore them, contrary to the furniture industry at large, which does not seek to create things that will hold and increase their value. It is my hope that the pieces we create will be passed on to the next generation; I don’t want to be stocking next Sunday’s garage sale.”

.

Aumont’s collection utilizes fine materials, such as walnut, glass, bronze and Lucite, and all the pieces are hand made by artisans. “As we go forward, we will turn away from woods that are not green,” she says, “and we will try to develop processes that will enable and encourage our clients to buy things that do not cause damage to the planet or the makers. In my family, we waxed our things, but today people seem to want their things to be bombproof. That has to stop.”

“We need to go back to teaching the value of caring for things and also of letting age show.”

Aumont’s design folder is brimming with sketches waiting to see the light of day and she is contemplating a partnership with a larger national company that will afford their implementation as well as a broader distribution channel. “This is a logical evolution for us,” she says. “We want to protect our face-to-face relationships with designers and that interesting interaction that has let us learn so much, but there is also a definite temptation and desire to grow in a new way.”                                                   . .

.

As Aumont traverses the Santa Ynez valley on horseback she spots flocks of crows who through some 21st-century Darwinian leap have learned to drop the walnuts they pluck from local trees into the streets where rolling cars will crush them and ease their feeding mission. She finds the crows’ wily adoption of old ways and means utterly riveting-a resonance that perhaps stems from the fact that the birds’ clever approach to accomplishing a goal is not that different from her own. She is sure to go on branding historical means with new details and morphing her ways in a manner that allows her business to thrive.

Digg This Post