Chicago designer Nicole Maret of THE ORDER releases her first tablescape collection: Leona, a dark, moody series of pieces meant to provoke and delight.
Skip the salt and pepper shakers and opt for a pair of Leona Clochettes, vessels that add serious spice to any meal. PHOTO BY KIRSTEN MICCOLI
Over the course of 10 collections of her fashion line THE ORDER (@thisistheorder), Logan Square resident Nicole Maret became the Windy City’s go-to goth girl, dropping jet-black garments to an adoring, in-the-know crowd. Now, Maret has turned her discerning eye to home design with Leona, a recently debuted “collection of curious tableware inspired by pomegranate lore”—from hand-fabricated fringed “cocktail cushions” to an extra-long glass pipette for spontaneous juicing inspired by “vegetarian vampires”. Practical? Not in the least. Fabulous? Utterly. Here, Maret reveals the story behind the series.
Designer Nicole Maret delights in provocation.
What inspired you to pivot from fashion to tablescape?
Provocation has always been paramount to THE ORDER, threads of elegant subversion woven into every garment I’ve created; into 10 collections of jet-black clothing and lingerie and punctuated by a final offering entirely in white. This 11th collection was a glitch in THE ORDER’s system; an interruption of its existing sartorial circuitry and a surrender to a blossoming desire to explore the parallel between the sensuality of lingerie and food, [and the idea] that the body and that which we offer it can provoke us to flirt with the indulgent and the forbidden. Amid a series of explorations in this realm was a collaboration with food photographer Garrett Sweet, in which I stepped out from behind my preferred side of the lens and in front of his, draped in my own sultry creations as I indulged in one caloric delight after another. This shoot catalyzed the transmutation of my canvas from body to table, and an application of THE ORDER’s delicate edge to a series of elegant and unorthodox objects designed to (un)dress your dinner party: “lingerie for your table,” in essence.
The Leona collection offers stylized items for the table like the Point, Pipette, Blade and Clochette.
How did you come to find inspiration in the pomegranate?
In addition to being universally recognized as a symbol of hospitality, the pomegranate has long been archetypal of the salacious and the forbidden; a sparkling paradox of both life and death and the cycle that intertwines them. The lore that surrounds the pomegranate echoed not only the thematic concept of Leona, but THE ORDER’s death and rebirth as well—it was the seeds of these stunning garnet orbs that provoked Persephone’s screaming descent into the underworld, marking the beginning of the Autumnal Equinox and the precise timing of THE ORDER’s resurrection as Leona.
What is your ultimate goal with the collection?
In a world in which time has become a commodity whose value we seem to simultaneously exalt and diminish, my intention is for Leona to have the capacity to suspend and extend an otherwise ordinary moment at the table. My goal is to make life more sentient, and perhaps more mysterious, one moment (and object) at a time.
Photography by: Nicole Maret putting on lipstick photo by GARRETT SWEET; all other images by KIRSTEN MICCOLI
