DECOREX VIP LOUNGE 2026

Designed by Claudia Dorsch

A woman with blonde hair, glasses, a pink sweater, and white pants stands outdoors on a snow-covered deck, with a wooden cabin, trees, and outdoor furniture around her.

I have always believed that the most memorable interiors begin long before the first drawing. They begin with curiosity — with travelling, and with discovering extraordinary workshops tucked away in mountain villages and quiet industrial estates. With conversations around a workbench, watching a craftsman shape timber by hand, or seeing a prototype emerge from a sketch.

Over the past twenty years I have been fortunate to design homes across London, the Alps and beyond. Every collaboration has become another chapter in a library of knowledge that is still growing. This lounge is where much of that experience comes together.

When Decorex invited me to design the 2026 VIP Lounge, I knew I did not want to make a typical lounge: an accumulation of chairs and sofas to rest in between appointments, pleasant and quickly forgotten. I wanted to build a real home at the fair. And I knew at once which home it should be. The chalet.

I chose the chalet because it is the one kind of building that asks you to slow down. It invites conversation. It rewards you for staying longer than you meant to. It holds you inside while you feel everything outside: timber under your hand, a fire at the centre of the room, the weather at the walls.

That idea became Back to the Future — The Chalet Reimagined.

Love,

Claudia

BACK TO THE FUTURE - THE CHALET REIMAGINED

The Concept

Every chalet asks you to slow down. It holds you inside while you feel everything outside — timber under your hand, a fire at the centre of the room, the weather at the walls.

For the 2026 VIP Lounge, Claudia Dorsch has built a real home inside the exhibition hall rather than a place to rest between appointments. Not a recreation of a traditional chalet, and not a luxury hotel that happens to sit in the mountains. Something in between: familiar alpine references handled in unfamiliar ways, traditional craftsmanship set beside contemporary engineering, natural materials expressed through new techniques.

Not nostalgia. Reinterpretation.

BUILT WITH THE PEOPLE SHE TRUSTS

People often ask Claudia where she sources furniture, fabrics or lighting. The truth is that beautiful interiors are never made by beautiful products alone. They are made through relationships — with craftspeople, family businesses, artists and workshops that have spent decades, sometimes generations, perfecting a single material or a single technique.

Over more than twenty years, Claudia has built these relationships across Europe and beyond. Many of the makers behind this lounge are people she has worked with on project after project: the atelier she bought her first chandelier from in 2019, the fabric house she returns to on almost every scheme, the workshop she has trusted with carved detail on several award-winning chalets before this one.

Each collaborator was invited not because their work is beautiful, though it is, but because each solved a specific part of the story — and because together, they say something no single object could. This lounge is not a collection of things. It is a gathering of people around one idea.

The Collaborators

Fireplace
Caleo — design-led fireplaces (piece by JC Bordelet)

Bar & joinery
Hux — bespoke bar in backlit onyx & burr walnut

Arrival & metal surfaces
Amron Architectural — Kriska curtain (KriskaDECOR) & metal surfaces

Lighting
Terzani — pendants: Mizu, Argent, Genesis
Tom Dixon — Melt pendants
Cameron Design House — chandeliers: Pilvi, Vetta, Halti
Esperia — Pluma & Aura lighting
Pooky — rechargeable picture & wall lights

Furniture & seating
Ben Whistler — Blue Label — bespoke upholstery: Rouel, Langdon, bespoke banquette
Billiani — chairs, incl. Fratina (est. 1911, Manzano)
Riva 1920 — stools & coffee table
Airborne — AA 'Butterfly' chair (design 1938; Airborne ed. 1951)
Leafchair — hanging chair
Ecco Trading — Blue Moon cabinet
Julian Chichester — Kingly cabinet
Colours of Arley — bespoke striped deck-chair fabric

Room division
USM — bespoke room divider & display (est. 1885)
Nordfixus — steel-and-glass doors
Klub Kiva — DJ console & sound

Walls & colour
Arte International — leather & silk wallcoverings
Phillip Jeffries — mountain-scenery wallcovering
Andrew Martin — wood-effect wallcovering
House of Hackney — Plantasia woodland wallcovering
Benjamin Moore — bespoke colour palette

Craft & art
Ebanisteria Marelli — carved mouldings & banister
Nadia Waterfield Fine Art — bespoke artworks & ceramics
MKW Creative — artworks and curation

Textiles
Romo / Kirkby — fabric
Pierre Frey — fabric
Dedar — fabric & wallpaper
Misia / Casamance — fabric & wallpaper
Houlès — poles, tiebacks & trimmings
Karin Sajo — fabric
Danesbridge — made-to-measure curtains
Manufactori — bobble curtain
Fibre by Auskin — furs, skins, rugs, poufs & beanbags
Ferreira de Sá — bespoke rug (est. 1946, Portugal — Portuguese Knot)

Library
Ultimate Library — curated book selection

cOMPETITION

WIN TWO NIGHTS IN ZERMATT

A large outdoor music concert with a crowd of people gathered in front of a stage where musicians are performing. The scene takes place in a mountainous area with houses and trees in the background, under a bright sun.

Two nights at the Backstage Hotel, PLUS two tickets to Zermatt Unplugged 2027 - the festival that brings acoustic performance into the mountains that shaped this lounge.

A chalet was never really about the architecture. It is about warmth, gathering, and the rituals of alpine life — and this prize is a chance to live inside that idea, rather than simply look at it.

The prize includes two nights at the Backstage Hotel, Zermatt, tickets for two to one concert evening of your choice, and a day on the slopes with Claudia and a private instructor.

How to enter
Hold a valid VIP ticket to Decorex 2026, and follow both @claudiainteriors and @decorex on Instagram. That's the entry.

A second way in
Share a photograph of the lounge on Instagram during the show, tagging both @claudiainteriors and @decorex, for a second chance to win.

One entry per person under each route. Full terms and conditions apply — read the full terms →