September 3, 2026

Functional Beauty. The Pursuit of Beauty Through Design | MPM

Philippe Montagne

FUNCTIONAL BEAUTY. THE PURSUIT OF BEAUTY THROUGH DESIGN.

There are probably as many ways of designing an object as there are designers, yet at Maison Philippe Montagne the journey almost invariably begins in the same place.

Beauty.

Not because beauty can easily be defined. Socrates discovered the difficulty of that exercise rather a long time ago, and more than two thousand years later we do not seem to have made considerably more progress.

La naissance de Venus par William-Adolphe Bouguereau

La nascita di Venere da Sandro Botticelli.

Yet while beauty may resist definition, we continue to recognise it, sometimes immediately, sometimes only after living with an object for a while. And so we pursue it.

The Pursuit of Beauty has always been the goal at Maison Philippe Montagne, although one rather quickly encounters another question.

If beauty is the destination, which road should one take to reach it?
For us, Art Deco has long provided one possible answer. Not Art Deco understood as decoration, nor as a nostalgic desire to reproduce the 1920s and 1930s, but Art Deco as a design guide, perhaps even a way of thinking.

Nearly a century after its golden age, so many of its buildings, furniture, automobiles, ocean liners and objects continue to appear remarkably contemporary, and one begins to wonder why.

Part of the answer, I suspect, lies in architecture.
Architecture has this rather wonderful obligation to reconcile imagination with reality. A building may aspire to beauty, but it must also stand, shelter, organise space and accompany human life. Art Deco managed this balancing act particularly gracefully, embracing modernity without abandoning elegance, geometry without becoming austere, and occasionally allowing itself that little touch of eccentricity which prevents perfection from becoming terribly boring. Its architectural language naturally leads us towards geometry and proportion. Curves meet straight lines. Volumes respond to one another. Materials provide texture and sensuality. An unusual detail may attract the eye, yet it should never disturb the harmony of the whole. Trends age surprisingly quickly. Proportions seem to enjoy a rather different relationship with time.
This is why geometry at Maison Philippe Montagne is never an objective in itself. Nor is Art Deco. Both are simply tools in the pursuit of something considerably more elusive: an object whose proportions feel right today and, hopefully, will continue to feel right many years from now.

There is a little ritual behind this idea.
Once a new design appears sufficiently resolved, I like to leave it around for a while. A few days become a few weeks, sometimes longer, and I simply look at it from time to time. The first excitement of novelty gradually disappears, which is precisely the point.

Then comes the rather more difficult question: will I still find it beautiful in ten years?
Sometimes the answer is yes. Quite often it is no. And then we start again. A proportion changes, a line moves, a handle is reconsidered, a detail disappears, another prototype follows and, eventually, another trip to the workshop. Many designs never make it beyond this stage, which can occasionally be frustrating, although probably rather less frustrating than spending years looking at an object one no longer finds beautiful.

Yet a travel object presents another difficulty. It has to travel.
A beautiful backpack that becomes uncomfortable after half an hour is not particularly beautiful once it is on one’s shoulders. An elegant satchel that cannot accommodate what its owner actually needs for a journey quickly loses some of its charm. A magnificent suitcase that becomes awkward the moment it enters a small hotel room has perhaps solved only half the problem. This is why functionality cannot arrive at the end of the design process. It has to be there almost from the beginning. Ergonomics, organisation, capacity, protection and ease of movement are considered while proportions and lines are still evolving. A pocket is not added simply because there happens to be some empty space. It has to correspond to something one genuinely carries and to the moment when one will need it. The right size. The right pocket. At the right place. It sounds rather obvious when written down, although achieving it without disturbing the purity of an object is considerably less obvious. One can always add another compartment, another fastening, another technical solution, but eventually the design begins to explain itself rather too loudly. The more interesting challenge is to integrate functionality so naturally that it almost disappears. A passport is simply where one’s hand expects to find it. A laptop is protected without the bag acquiring the appearance of technical equipment. A shoulder strap feels comfortable after an hour rather than merely looking elegant in a photograph. A travel bag accommodates considerably more than its silhouette would suggest. A suitcase opens in a hotel room without unnecessarily occupying half of it.

Perhaps there is a name for what we have been pursuing all along.

Functional Beauty.

Not functionality decorated with luxury, and certainly not beauty reluctantly compromised in order to make an object useful. Something rather more harmonious. Functionality asks whether an object works. Functional Beauty asks whether the way it works becomes part of its beauty. This distinction is particularly important for objects designed for travel because they live with us in a rather intimate way. They are lifted, carried, opened, closed, placed beside us in trains, rolled through airports, left in hotel rooms and filled again before the next departure. Their beauty is therefore not experienced only through the eye. It is experienced through use. A well-positioned pocket can be beautiful. So can a perfectly balanced handle. There is even a peculiar beauty in discovering that an apparently slim bag somehow accommodates everything one intended to take away for forty-eight hours. These moments rarely appear spectacular in photographs, yet they contribute enormously to the pleasure of owning an object.

The Doppio backpack, for example, was conceived for people who prefer a true backpack on their shoulders to a briefcase in their hand, yet see no reason why this practical choice should oblige them to carry a shapeless sports bag over a beautifully cut suit or an elegant twin set. Its architectural lines establish its character, while comfort, organisation and the capacity required for a short journey were developed within those lines rather than added afterwards.

Turn the same philosophy horizontally and one arrives at the Lungo, a travel satchel whose unusually elegant, slim proportions quietly conceal the capacity expected from a forty-eight-hour companion.

The 96Hrs suitcase expresses the idea differently again. Its proportions and eau-forte engravings belong to the pursuit of architectural beauty, while its ability to remain standing when opened becomes particularly pleasing in a small hotel room. A horizontal pocket allows catalogues, magazines and documents collected during a journey to slip naturally inside, remaining flat and protected.

#DesignPhilosophy

It is not a new aesthetic to be applied to our objects, nor a convenient expression invented after they were designed. It simply gives a name to something that has been present in the Modus Operandi all along. Beauty remains the goal. Art Deco and architecture provide guidance. Geometry, proportion and fine materials provide the language. Functionality, ergonomics and organisation are integrated from the beginning. And somewhere along that journey, if everything has gone rather well, Functional Beauty begins to emerge. The result should feel different without becoming eccentric for eccentricity’s sake, innovative without being condemned to age with the innovation, and practical without allowing function to overwhelm elegance.

In other words, very much our DNA.

Avant-Garde Luxury Bags. Pour le Voyage.

Different enough to intrigue. Timeless enough to endure. Functional enough to accompany the journey. And, hopefully, beautiful enough that one still experiences a little pleasure when looking at the object many years later. Which brings us, rather naturally, back to where we started.

Beauty.