Falling In Love With Design: The Latest Collection From Dima Loginoff

by Toby

Russian designer, Dima Loginoff has doubled his creative output in the last two seasons. Perhaps it was the unbearable Moscow winter, but more likely it was Loginoff's growing passion and exuberance for interior design, now that he has found the perfect vehicle for his creative talent.

Until a year ago, Mr. Loginoff designed hairstyles for the rich and famous in Moscow. When he finished his schooling in interior design last year, having won several student design competitions (Most recently, Loginoff received an International Design Award for his Curl My Lamp), he left his lucrative, but artistically unfulfilling career as a hair stylist, to establish his own design studio.

In a previous column, written last September, I covered Mr. Loginoff's first design collection. It is full of bold, bright, buoyant designs - practical designs yet, regardless of size, destined to be the center of attention in any room.

This new collection is every bit as spectacular, but more historically drawn, more humorous in subtle ways, more dramatic in others... and there's more "Russia" in Loginoff's work. We'll see these characteristics in the designs below.

1. Vassili Chair

The baluster legs, which date back to Greek and Roman times, were revived in galore fashion in Victorian Rococo. The high back chairs, decorated with gold and floral prints, served as "beds" for elegant ladies that did not want to disturb their ornate hairdos overnight. Vassili, a common name in Russia, is a concept from the Rococo period that Loginoff re-creates in a new and trendy and sexy design.

2. Trunk Lighting Design

The glass Trunk lamps were designed for a bar or cafe, but they would bring the same sense of naughtiness to your home with these colored light bulbs.

Here is the inspiration for the Trunk lamps.

Less mystery in the Trunks when fitted with white bulbs, but clarity is not all bad!

3. Cut Chair

Now everything in this chair is visually captivating to me -- from the simple, repeated pattern to the sensual shiny material to its awesome simplicity and novelty. But when Mr. Loginoff shared his inspiration, I was even more drawn into it. He was thinking of textiles, of cloth being cut. Of course! You can see it in the chair's natural dip in the seat... just like a heavy textile, maybe velour, would sink just slightly if it were held that far apart.

4. Amourette Lighting Design

Here Loginoff plays with a traditional shape of a hanging lamp. While the silhouette remains the same, he "slices" up the lamp into rings of different colors with spaces of different sizes between them, again making the traditional trendy and fun.

5. Fedora Lamp

Fedora, the night lights, have their roots in the Russian Matryoshka dolls. While the Matryoshkas are purely ornamental, the Fedoras are functional as well as beautiful. Carved glass will create interesting shadows in the night over the small LED lights; Loginoff shows off his conservation measures by carving one glass with a green motif.

6. Miami Lamp

An already familiar motif of Loginoff's, a traditional shape is cut apart to allow air and space to peek through. The Miami is metal and wiry. The wire orbs that seem to twist and twirl furiously in the shade are actually carefully planned at two angles that mirror each other. The lamp's base looks like the orbs fell in unison from the shade and just happened to land in perfect juxtaposition.

7. Andrew Lamp

Here, Loginoff breaks up another form, this time a glass lamp, with solid stripes of different sizes. Modern, but traditional modern. But when you see the Andrew lamp at night, you actually see through it, and with other lights turned of, Andrew looks like he's floating.

8. Checkered Chair

Checkered takes the Cut Chair (above) a few steps further. Not a textile, but a light-weight metal that can be easily formed and, in one cut piece, create a chair.

9. Sleeping Biscuit Lamp

Biscuit is unglazed porcelain. It is a material that Loginoff has always loved, and one night he dreamt about a design for a biscuit lamp and woke up and went to his computer to create the design. It didn't come to him easily, so he decided to create a fairytale (Sleeping Beauty?) about the lamp, and what evolved was this lovely diamond faceted biscuit lamp.

10. The Psyche Sofa

This huge sofa is intended for a large lobby in an office or industrial setting. Its centipede legs, tall and skinny, contradict the undulating hills and valleys of the smooth Corian seating area... where every man is his own island. Loginoff says he's aware that the Psyche Sofa is strange. "It looks like it's going to get up and run away," he says laughing.