About

Marion Stora has loved sailing ever since she was a small child. Her other love is art. She began studying architecture, attracted by the ideas of the Bauhaus and the functionalism so dear to the UAM (French Union of Modern Artists), but quickly realized that it was above all interior architecture that captivated her. She continued her studies at Penninghen Paris, graduating in 2006.

She then worked with renowned interior yacht designers in London for four exciting years. Back in Paris, Marion Stora joined Remi Tessier to collaborate on two iconic yacht projects. The technical requirements involved in designing yacht interiors, working with discerning clients and discovering the work of committed craftsmen, were to leave their mark.

Keen to express her universe and to broaden her scope, she opened her own studio in 2011. Initially on her own – one foot in Paris and the other in London, where she maintains many contacts – and subsequently with a team, and now with the support of her husband Didier in developing the business.

Whether a contemporary 2000m2 villa in Portugal’s Cascais, warmed by the use of textured finishes, Victorian homes in London or an apartment in Northern Europe all in shades of white to show off the paintings of its collector owner, each project is made to measure, guided by the needs of its clients.

Marion Stora’s style is immediately recognizable and distinctive, drawn with rigour and precision, yet warm, colorful and lively in atmosphere. Her taste for natural materials – hand-woven fabrics, raw hides and wood – and her soft, harmonious lines, establish Marion Stora in a vision marked by modernism.

Finnish designer Paavo Tynell (1890–1973), Italian designers Gino Sarfatti (1912–1985) and Angelo Lelli (1915–1984), and Brazilian Jose Zanine Caldas (1919–2001) remain important references. But Marion Stora’s primary inspiration can be found in the work of Pierre Chapo (1927–1987). Furniture designer influenced by an encounter with a shipwright, Pierre Chapo, sought to combine contemporary design with traditional skills. His approach guides Marion Stora in designing timeless furniture of integrity.

Having always designed made-to-measure pieces for private clients, Marion Stora is now producing refined pieces, crafted in noble materials and accented with warm tones. Elegant creations that are developed in partnership with the finest workshops.

In her organic dining table, she orchestrates the meeting of two talents; creator Mauro Mori formed a sculptural base in Albizia wood from the Seychelles, while materials alchemist Pierre Bonnefille elaborated a coating combining mineral powders, natural pigments and metallic powders for a tabletop with a soft, warm feel.

Marion Stora’s chairs combine the power of brushed solid oak with the elegance of a natural leather upholstery. The chairs are made and assembled by Laval – furniture makers since 1892.

Her whimsical armchair, its gouged wooden armrests extend into sculpted animal feet, comes from Ateliers Jouffre in Lyon. The seat is upholstered in a hand-woven fabric made by Toyine Sellers in the Vercors.

A nature lover, the interior designer has arranged a protective canopy over her dining-room table with the foliage of a giant ficus. The apartment’s balconies feature lush green compositions of grasses and climbing plants, the fruit of her collaboration with landscape designer Arnaud Casaus.

Marion Stora lives with her husband Didier and their son on Paris’s Left Bank, just a stone’s throw from the Champs-de-Mars with its shady paths lined with plane trees, horse-chestnuts and limes.

This calm, serene interior is entirely dedicated to family life and animated gatherings with friends, where notes from the piano can be heard on the night air. The musicality of the apartment also emanates from the flat tones of color punctuating the walls: a swathe of black groundnut in the dining room, another of October mistletoe in the study, notes of blue-green in the child’s room.

These touches of color also punctuate Marion Stora’s furniture, such as the two footstools upholstered in fuchsia leather framing the sideboard in the entrance hall. Desk, bookcase, seating – many of the pieces here were made-to-measure, down to the wool and mohair rug for her son’s bedroom, woven by Manufacture Robert Four following a drawing by her son.

Alongside her own creations, the interior architect likes to mix vintage furniture, both Scandinavian and Italian, forming compositions of elegant simplicity. The hall is lit by Paavo Tynell wall lights, originally designed to indicate the room numbers in a hotel corridor. Contemporary creation is not to be outdone. Marion Stora commissioned a sculptural coffee table divided into quarters from designer-artist Éric Schmitt. A Balinese daybed – a travel souvenir – breathes exoticism and fantasy into this rigorously designed interior.

Marion Stora develops lived-in interiors that tell the stories of their owners.

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