Interview with Manon and Pierre, creators of Rugier.

Hello, can you introduce yourselves?

Manon Dumerle: I am an interior designer, a graduate of Camondo School, and a textile designer, a graduate of LISAA. I am passionate about manufacturing, design, textiles, patterns, and decorative arts. My work as an interior designer naturally led me to consider the rug as a central piece for a successful interior.

Pierre: My name is Pierre, I am a graphic designer, a graduate of Penninghen, with a background in artistic direction at several Parisian agencies. Manon and I share a deep passion for design, furnishing, and interiors.

We are also a couple in life, and it is from this closeness that Rugier was born: a house that allows us to meet talented people, see beautiful interiors, and work on true, rich, beautiful pieces, with depth and an artisanal dimension. This project came about quite naturally, as we were increasingly asked to design rugs for interiors.

What is Rugier?

Rugier is our handmade rug house and, above all, a design brand. We work with designers around us or those we’ve met through this project, and we want to make it a long-lasting house that provides contemporary design with the support it deserves for modern and distinctive interiors, featuring strong pieces that convey an idea, a reflection, a coherent territory.

Where are your rugs made?

Our rugs are made in India, in the Bhadohi region. We work with several suppliers selected for the quality of their work. All our rugs are Goodweave certified, an international certification that guarantees the best social prerequisites in this industry: no child labor, integration plans, and guarantees on working conditions. We work in close collaboration with our manufacturers, whom we visit on-site in India. This proximity ensures us the best materials and the best possible manufacturing.

Where do your partner designers come from and how do you work with them?

We give our partner designers carte blanche, with one single requirement: that there be something that takes us somewhere. A territory, a narrative, a coherent inspiration. Not just a pattern that decorates and is forgotten by adapting to ambient colors, but a design that transports us into a referenced universe. This can be a landscape, the animal world, optical effects, a historical decorative movement, or even literary references.

We currently work with Mimo Studio, Marina Taslé d'Héliand, Alice Wood, and Hugues Flochel, designers who share this ethos and expertise in textile design. And we are also developing our own collections. What we ask of everyone is the same: a strong idea, an approach.

And for the collections you create yourselves, where do your inspirations come from?

Our inspirations are often long-accumulated desires, territories that we have carried since the beginning of our respective creative journeys. Manon draws from mosaics, geometry, vernacular techniques, and natural materials. Pierre regularly returns to postmodern design, the Memphis movement, and other popular graphic movements of the 80s and 90s. These are deep references, not superficial citations.

What is your creative process?

We fill notebooks, research references, and build complete mood boards before we start drawing. From there, we develop designs manually, through drawing, by photographing textures, materials, and various sources of inspiration. We can also work more experimentally, by creating optical accidents, by playing with repetitions that generate visual effects. In any case, nothing is ever gratuitous. We always strive to communicate something.
An essential dimension of this work is transposition. A rug design is not conceived as an illustration or a graphic pattern: tufting and weaving impose their own constraints, in terms of minimum detail size, number of colors, and scale. We integrate these constraints from the start, and they often contribute to creating something unexpected, a design that would not have existed otherwise. This is one of the things we find most fertile in this profession.
Once the designs are finalized, we associate wool palettes with each pattern and work with our suppliers on a series of samples to precisely fix the colors before launching definitive production.

How many collections do you release per year?

We are launching five collections at our opening, and we plan to add a new one regularly, in spring and autumn.

What is your vision for this profession?

A rug should integrate into an interior. It should not overpower its environment, unless, of course, the client wishes to make it the centerpiece. Our role is to give character, a spirit, an idea, without competing with its surroundings in terms of visual richness or detail. The rug must be both discreet in its coexistence and a true showstopper when one pauses and truly observes it.

For us, a thoughtfully designed and composed interior cannot do without a rug, of the right size, with colors that perfectly complement what already exists. It is an essential element.