Each summer, when the Provençal sun shines high above the Mediterranean landscape and Villa Noailles‘ geometric shadows lengthen across its terraced gardens, the design world makes its annual pilgrimage to Hyères for the 19th edition of Design Parade Hyères. Once again, this modernist hilltop villa will be the epicenter of new ideas, material innovation and aesthetic risk-taking. Launched in 2006 as an incubator for emerging talent, the festival has steadily carved out its own niche — somewhere between academic showcase, creative retreat and Riviera garden party. While the world’s bigger design fairs lean towards commercial spectacle, Hyères offers something smaller in scale, but often more culturally potent. No wow-effect here, just sun-dappled exhibition rooms, experimental installations, and a carefully curated roster of young designers whose work feels as fresh as the sea air. For 2025, the competition remains the beating heart of the festival. Ten emerging designers —chosen from hundreds of international applications — will exhibit site-specific projects that push at the boundaries of industrial design, craft and sculpture.
This year, there’s a noticeable shift towards material sincerity and process-driven storytelling. So, European flax-linen appears in unexpected contexts — seven of the finalist projects have embraced this traditional yet sustainable material, responding to the growing conversation around ecological responsibility in design. Rather than a parade of finished, polished objects, the festival increasingly celebrates pieces that reveal their making. Surfaces retain the marks of process, forms lean towards the experimental, and functional definitions often blur. Visitors can anticipate encountering objects that might sit somewhere between a chair and a performance prop, a table and an abstract sculpture, a lamp and a social commentary.
It’s this kind of open-ended thinking that continues to make Hyères a vital stop on the design calendar. Presiding over this year’s jury is Jaime Hayon, the Madrid-based polymath whose practice swings effortlessly between fine art and design, humour and craftsmanship. Hayon brings a certain lightness and theatricality to the proceedings (not to mention a Mediterranean sensibility that aligns perfectly with the Hyères mood…) Joining him on the jury: a cross-section of design editors, curators, previous festival laureates and fellow practitioners. The mix of critical voices ensures that the chosen finalists reflect more than just aesthetic trends: they represent a pulse check on where design thinking is heading.
In true Villa Noailles fashion, the festival extends beyond the competition. Hayon will unveil “The Mirror”, a personal and playful exhibition that promises both introspection and spectacle, a reminder of his talent for balancing whimsy with rigor. Also returning are last year’s Grand Prix winners, Sacha Parent and Valentine Tiraboschi, whose 2024 project exploring sand-based materials now evolves into “Granular Mechanics”, a larger-scale installation interrogating material temporality and erosion. Another standout on the 2025 exhibition roster is a retrospective nod to the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, tracing a century of design dialogues and reaffirming Hyères’ position as a long-standing witness to the evolution of decorative arts in France. There’s no overstating the role that Villa Noailles plays in the atmosphere of Design Parade Hyères.
One highlight this year: a finely curated installation by Galerie MCDE, paying tribute to Pierre Chareau. Like many of his avant-garde peers, Chareau was commissioned by the Noailles to contribute to the villa’s evolving design vocabulary. Some of the ideas he would later perfect for his Parisian landmark, the Maison de Verre, were first tested here, inside what Charles de Noailles affectionately called “une maison de vacances intéressante à habiter,” which translates to “an interesting holiday home to live in.” The standout piece? A suspended daybed – equal parts engineering experiment and modernist manifesto on leisure. Today, Galerie MCDE, custodians of Chareau’s design legacy, continue to reissue his key works, from his unmistakable lighting to select furniture pieces. For Hyères, they’ve brought them back home.
