Some pieces of furniture transcend their purpose. They stop being simply something to sit in, sleep on, or set your coffee upon, and become something else entirely: a cultural touchstone, a design revolution, a piece of living history that we carry with us through our homes and our lives.
Vogue asked some of the world’s most respected interior designers and design professionals to identify the most iconic furniture designs in history. The answers range from hand-finished Art Deco sideboards to wire mesh armchairs that blur the line between furniture and sculpture. Here is the list, and darling, it is as beautiful as it is fascinating.
Sideboard by Charles Dudouyt
Working in the 1920s through 1940s, Charles Dudouyt paired refined Art Deco geometry with a sculptural use of solid oak and bold proportions. Each piece carries its own story, shaped by material, maker, and time, and feels inherently timeless. Designer Sarah Solis of Sarah Solis Design Studio describes it simply as a piece intended to be passed down through generations. Craftsmanship as legacy. There is nothing more luxurious than that.
B35 Chair by Marcel Breuer
Robin Alesch, founder of the legendary Roman and Williams, describes Marcel Breuer’s B35 cantilevered chair for Thonet as a beautiful gesture of pure intention. Pairing industrial steel with organic rattan, Breuer understood that modernism was never about austerity but about clarity, removing weight so presence could emerge. The chair holds you, Alesch says, the way a great building holds a city: lightly, confidently, and with total grace.
Lampampe by Ingo Maurer
Two simple geometric shapes made of softly textured Japanese paper, each unique to its owner as the paper settles and crunches into place over time. Designer Simone Bodmer-Turner of Simone Bodmer-Turner Studio loves hers for the marks of life it carries: a coffee spray, a slight tear from a curious dog. The perfect marriage between a statement piece and something that disappears beautifully into the background as a textural jumble of geometry.
Uto’ Dining Chairs by Axel Einar Hjorth
Designed and manufactured in the 1930s, these chairs are, as designer Alan Eckstein of Somerset House puts it, incredibly ahead of their time. They look as though they were made in the 1950s and 60s, but it all happened so much earlier. Simple, tasteful, made of great Nordic pine with no hardware, the Uto chairs play brilliantly on proportion, with rounded straight lines that trick the eye in the most delightful way. A true futurist.
E 1027 Table by Eileen Gray
Designed for her home Villa E-1027 on the Côte d’Azur, this chrome and glass table is a perfect example of Eileen Gray’s utility-meets-glamour philosophy. A study in machine-age beauty and minimal elegance, designer Dan Fink of Dan Fink Studio describes it perfectly: it simply sits beside something old in a room and makes it feel entirely new.
How High the Moon Armchair by Shiro Kuramata
A paradox made real. Crafted from industrial wire mesh, Kuramata’s armchair elevates a humble material into something almost ethereal, becoming art without ever losing its purpose. Simona Flacco and Riccardo Crenna, co-founders of Simple Flair, call it one of the most iconic pieces in design history: a true cross-cultural encounter that makes the invisible visible. We completely agree.
Furniture is not just what we live in. At its finest, it is what we live by. And these six pieces prove that beautifully.