HOT DESK: It’s a big year for Montblanc, which is marking the 100th anniversary of one of its most famous designs, the Meisterstück pen. Although the company has kept mum on its plans for the anniversary, it’s clear that 2024 will not only be the year of the pen, but of the desk, too.
Montblanc‘s multitasking artistic director Marco Tomasetta has unveiled a new desk, which has a midcentury modern edge, cubbyholes for books on either side, and an open space underneath to see the legs of the chair and sitter.
He showed it off during Montblanc’s fall 2024 presentation in Paris at La Galerie Bourbon, and described it as “a place for self-expression and meditation,” and a home where past and future technology can live together.
“I also wanted to give a new generation — young people who are used to looking at their phones all the time — the space and place to work and to design,” he said, describing the desk as “a sacred and special place for a designer, a writer, a creative, a place where ideas take shape.”
He said he was initially inspired by a vintage image of a woman by the seaside, sitting at a small desk planted in shallow water — and writing.
During the anniversary year, the desk will be on display at 20 Montblanc boutiques worldwide. An accompanying campaign shows Montblanc friends and brand ambassador Zinedine Zidane sitting at, or on, the new design.
During the presentation, Tomasetta also showed off the brand’s latest collaboration with Zidane, a luggage collection made from sustainable, water-resistant materials, and a few new women’s designs that will make their debut later this year.
French soccer legend Zidane and his wife, Véronique, and Rupert Friend were among the guests at a breakfast at La Galerie Bourbon, which was formerly the Parisian residence of the Spanish royal family.
Among the venue’s famous guests was — appropriately for Montblanc — the aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who is said to have drawn inspiration for his novella, “Le Petit Prince,” from his stay there.
Montblanc is part of Swiss luxury group Compagnie Financière Richemont, parent of brands including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Chloé and Dunhill.
Tomasetta joined in 2021 with the mission of accelerating the brand’s transformation into a “luxury business-lifestyle maison.”
He was hired by the outgoing chief executive officer Nicolas Baretzki.
It was Baretzki who tapped Zidane as a brand ambassador, unveiled a hotel-like flagship at 152 Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and Montblanc Haus in Hamburg. The Hamburg building houses elements of a museum, art gallery, hall of fame and school in a sleek black edifice stamped with the German brand’s famous snowcap emblem.
