PARIS — When French designer Pauline Leprince moved from the theater scene to design after the COVID-19 pandemic, her futuristic aesthetic quickly caught on. In 2024, she garnered international attention for her redesign of Karl Lagerfeld‘s Rue des Saints-Pères home, which she turned into a scenographic temple of tempered glass and metal.
“My design work is quite radical, so I really love to work on objects or objects that are really big and explosive…with also some code of the past, which is really important for me,” she said, in an interview with WWD inside Paris fashion-set haunt, Le Meurice hotel.
Leprince, a trained theater actress who retrained as an interior designer and architect at France‘s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, is gearing up to break onto the New York City design scene with “Beneath the Surface” at Kaia Editions’ 200 Lexington Avenue showroom. The exhibit will open Wednesday and will close late April.
A piece from Pauline Leprince’s “Beneath the Surface” collection, which will be featured at NYC’s Kaia Editions showroom on Wednesday.
Kaia Editions is a London-based high-end lighting brand started in 2013 by Manuela Szewald, who traded a career in finance and law for design. The firm’s studio and atelier are in Munich.
With the upcoming showcase, Leprince will unveil a collection of three minimalist pieces: a console, a mirror and a lamp, characterized by sharp geometry and burnt metal and glass.
Conceived as points of tension between the individual and society, these objects probe what lies beyond appearances or what lies beneath the surface, she said.
Through her designs she confronts difficult topics and remnants of the past.
A recent collection, for example, was about a past relationship. Named Prima Lien, it was a dialogue between tempered glass and metals. “I wanted to work with these two materials as is if they were different worlds or like different countries fighting,” Leprince said.
She started her career working with industrial designer Christian Haas and she said she has been inspired by the Zero art movement, which was founded in Düsseldorf in the late 1950s by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene and was devoted to utopian principles and light and movement.
In 2025, Leprince’s studio has also developed several scenography projects, including the 11th edition of the Les Rendez-vous de la Matière + Fair(e) trade show.
A piece from Pauline Leprince’s “Beneath the Surface” collection, which will be featured at NYC’s Kaia Editions showroom on Wednesday.
Courtesy of Pauline Leprince
Her affinity for burnt metal, combined with glass, is rooted in its innate power to spark transformation. Fire imprints itself into the surface, leaving it marked and burnt, bearing memory and traces of the past, she added, pointing out that it’s a fracture that refuses to be erased. Glass, in contrast, is transparent and fragile but allows light to flow through it.
In a design world that so frequently borrows from the past, Leprince said she’s intent on creating fresh environments with her own unique language. While she frequently uses metal, she’s starting to ponder new materials. “It’s important not to stay in the same environments. And I think when you design or you’re an architect and you work in the arts…you are super lucky. I’m doing the work I love.”