Hospitality Design - August 2018 - 57

products profile lara bohinc
By Alissa Ponchione
Photography courtesy of Bohinc Studio

ROMANCING
THE STONE

A jewelry designer takes on furnishings

To help her friend with his final fashion
show as a student at the Royal College of
Art in London, Lara Bohinc, then a master's
student in metalwork and jewelry, created
an elaborate headpiece-what she describes

as a modern-day version of headphones
draped in jewelry and wire. "It was nothing
special," she quips, but it caught the eye of
British Vogue's former fashion editor Lucinda
Chambers, who requested the experimental
headgear be shot for an editorial in the
magazine.
If anything, that big break made the
Slovenia-born, London-based Bohinc hustle
that much more. "You have to do a lot of
editorial for it to change your life," she points
out. It's an accumulation of hard work
that has propelled her career forward, she
says, which includes winning the British
Fashion Council's New Generation Award
after graduating in 1997, opening her own
eponymous studio, and consulting for the likes
of Gucci and Cartier.
Her aesthetic centers on balance-
something she's been searching for since
she studied industrial design at Ljubljana
Academy of Fine Arts in Slovenia-and
jewelry design gives her the freedom to
explore the limits of materiality. "It's a mix of
all the disciplines," she explains. "It's graphic,
and it lies between fashion and industrial
design." But after years of working on small
accessories, Bohinc was ready to tackle "larger
objects that are not related to the body and

limited by wearability," she says. Product
design is "something I was always meant
to do."
Her Art Deco-inspired furniture pieces
are a testament to her evolution as a
designer, marrying materials like glass and
ceramic with her signature use of metals,
which "bring a light to the body," she
explains. Bohinc's collections are part of an
obsession with "splitting and deconstructing
pure geometric forms," she adds. Take her
Collision lighting series, inspired by the
jewelry range of the same name, where she
plays "with the moving of spheres."
Adding to her list of accomplishments is
a London showroom that opened last year,
and her first public commission, the brass
and concrete Friendship Bench designed for
Kensington and Chelsea Council that sits
opposite Brutalist landmark Trellick Tower.
Bohinc's growing furniture line recently
welcomed seating and consoles, as well.
A nod to her keen design eye, the playful,
feminine pieces are dressed in conspicuous
colors and circular shapes that harken back
to a glamorous era while still looking firmly
to the future. hd
b ohi ncst u di o.com

1. Bohinc's Since
the World is Round
collection draws
from celestial bodies,
boasting three
geometrically shaped
chairs, Orbit, Solar,
and Lunar.

hospitalitydesign.com August 2018

057
http://www.bohincstudio.com http://www.hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - August 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - August 2018
