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Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend 2

Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend 2 is a celebration of the ritual of dressing. Matali Crasset has redrawn the archetypal cheval mirror (psyché) of the 19th century to create a contemporary beauty.

Matali Crasset spent her childhood in the small village of Chalons en Champagne in the north of France, on a farm where work and life were intimately bound. She graduated from Les Ateliers – École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in 1991 as an industrial designer and shortly afterwards began work for Philippe Starck in Paris and Denis Santachiara in Milan. In 1997 she received the Grand Prix for design from the city of Paris and set up her own design studio in 1998. Her most recent solo exhibition Soundscapes was held at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in 2007. Many of her creations are in private collections and international museums, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

As with the very act of dressing, the joy of this piece lies in the details and the finish. The three lengths of bevelled, handsilvered glass stand as both a mirror and as a dressing screen. The mirror is made of heavier drawn glass which produces a kinder, softer cast of light which is further enhanced by the hand-applied silver backing. The front cantilevered mirrored panels each stand delicately upon slender wooden legs, alluringly glimpsed from underneath. The outer edge of the mirror is left as clear glass and is finished with an asymmetric Vauxhall beveled perimeter to achieve a seam of the utmost subtlety. The back is as perfectly finished as the front. It is made of the finest custom-dyed, hand-cut and hand-stitched goat hide. Hanging from the rear within the lattice-work of the asymmetric slender wood and brass frames is a single, permanently affixed bespoke wooden hanger for a single gown. This elegant mirror awaits only the beauty of its reflection.