Everything You Need to Know About Paris Design Week 2017

Every September, Paris Design Week marks the start of a new year for international designers. This fringe event during Maison et Objet allows professionals, trend addicts, and any other curious people, to rediscover the French capital through the prism of innovation. In addition to Now! Le Off, PDW’s springboard for young talents and the Talks series of debates, 200 key venues guide visitors along 6 themed walks through 4 districts. Every year, some 100,000 visitors take part in this free 8-day, a 4-evening celebration of all things design.

Over its 6 editions, Paris Design Week has become a reference on the international design scene, one which boasts an ideal position on the design calendar, taking place as it does at the same time as key influential professionals from the fields of design, decoration, fashion, and art meet up in Paris. Could there be a more a more opportune moment to present a new venue, a new collection or a new talent? Working in close coordination with Maison et Objet trade show, it takes advantage of the presence of 3,000 exhibitors and 80,000 professionals from 140 different countries, as well as guaranteed media attention thanks to 2,500 journalists.

What’s new in design this autumn?

The sixth annual Paris Design Week, scheduled to overlap with Maison et Objet Paris, will take place from Saturday 8 to Saturday 16 September 2017. For eight days, the event invites French and international professionals and the general public to discover the best showcases of design in Paris, while the leading talents in the discipline gather in the Now! Le Off exhibition (9-13 Sept. 2017 – Les Docks, Cité de la Mode et du Design).

Paris Design Week is an itinerary uniting 300 participants that all proudly promote first-rate design in Paris. At a time when new collections are popping up in stores and the new concepts for the autumn season are being launched, the event brings together the talents and forces of retailers, galleries, showrooms, hotels, and restaurants for eight days to share their experience in design and creation with the public.

Late-night openings, debates, and installations bring the city to life, echoing the new releases for autumn and kicking off the pre-holiday sales period. This latest edition intends to forge even stronger and broader ties between those involved in the Parisian design, but also to strengthen the event’s technical dimension with the creation of the Projets special itinerary. Established to mirror the development of the Maison et Objet projects show, this newly themed itinerary invites specifiers and private individuals with development projects to enter the participants’ showrooms to meet interior design professionals – a unique early-autumn opportunity to start planning home improvement and décor projects.

4 Effervescent districts / 4 Shopping itineraries

From neighbourhoods with a furnishing tradition to the capital’s new creative hotspots, Paris Design Week showcases Paris’ 4 most dynamic districts with 200 key venues that are sure to make a splash: showrooms, shops, galleries, studios and workshops, restaurants and hotels, not forgetting museums and other institutions, celebrate a multifaceted approach to design with exhibitions, temporary installations and presentations of previously unseen products.

5 Preview openings / 5 Receptions and networking events

Five preview openings, organized in turn in the different neighborhoods hosting the event, make up Paris Design Week’s after-work events. In other words, five perfect opportunities to discover or rediscover these trendsetting destinations, meet professionals from the Maison et Objet trade show and key figures on the French and international design scenes.

The Paris Design Week Talks

Paris Design Week invites Now! Le Off’s visitors to see things from another perspective with the Talks, a series of 4 panel discussions organised in partnership with Intramuros magazine and which give the floor to design professionals. Since 2015, numerous prestigious speakers such as Alberto Alessi, Patrick Jouin, Jay Osgerby, Matali Crasset, Inga Sempé, Ferruccio Laviani and Pierre Charpin have spoken about their profession and how it is changing.

Paris Design Week is a week of non-stop encounters, new discoveries, inaugurations and receptions that puts every aspect of Parisian creativity under the spotlight. Make sure you don’t miss it! We know we won’t!