Rethinking the familiar.
DIANE B. DE LA SERVE,
DESIGNER
Diane B. de La Serve is a Paris-based designer whose work explores the relationship between form, function and the way objects inhabit our spaces. Her practice grew from a longstanding and very personal dissatisfaction with utilitarian objects whose appearance seemed entirely dictated by their purpose. Rather than simply making them more beautiful, she became interested in transforming their form — preserving their use while allowing them to acquire an identity of their own. Her first collection, Unseen Function, brings this approach to objects designed for animals and the humans who live with them.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM.
Diane's approach is not about decorating an established type or disguising function beneath beautiful materials. Her interest lies in altering the form deeply enough for the familiar object to become uncertain, while preserving the use that made it necessary in the first place. The function remains. Its visual codes do not.
“I am interested in objects that fulfil a function without being defined by it.”
FROM NECESSITY TO COLLECTION.
Studying animal behaviour made the challenge more precise: the functions themselves could not disappear. The question became: How can function remain fully present without determining the object's identity? This question became Unseen Function — Collection 01, a series of objects exploring different responses to the same tension: some move away from the visual codes of their function; another can shift function altogether, moving from animal to human.
OUT OF TYPE.
A familiar function tends to produce a familiar type — a set of shapes and visual codes through which we immediately recognise what an object is for. Diane's work questions this automatic relationship between what an object does and what we expect it to look like. Sometimes this means transforming the form until its original typology becomes uncertain. At other times, it means allowing the object itself to move between uses. Not a new skin for a familiar object. A different way of conceiving the object itself.
BACKGROUND.
Trained in artistic practices at Penninghen, Diane B. de La Serve built her career at the intersection of creation, art direction and brand strategy, working with Peclers, Monoprix and Galeries Lafayette. She later developed her research into object perception, value and consumer behaviour at ESCP Business School, where her professional thesis helped formalise questions that had long informed her personal relationship with objects. She lives and works in Paris.
A VISION BEHIND OBJECTS..
Unseen Function begins with animals, but the question behind the collection reaches further. Diane B. de La Serve's practice explores familiar utilitarian objects and the possibility of moving them beyond the visual conventions of their function. Future collections may explore different objects, uses, rituals or relationships.
The subject can change. The question remains.
Unseen Function
Collection 01
Objet Sculpture
Trinity
4 Steps to Heaven
Lust
Cloud Nine
Le collier
