By: Natalie Johnson
Christiane Lemieux built and sold two furniture companies. Her third is designed around a single idea: make it once, make it to last.
In 2013, Christiane Lemieux sold DwellStudio to Wayfair. The brand had grown to 800 retail locations across 40 countries by then. Fortune had named her one of its Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, the only honoree that year from interior design. It was the capstone of a career built on making good design fast and accessible.
The company she founded seven years later is built on a completely different premise.
Lemieux et Cie produces what it calls “Forever Furniture”: small-batch, artisan-made pieces in travertine, burl wood, and cast brass. Each piece is designed to last long enough to be passed down. Lemieux works with craft partners across continents, each chosen for techniques refined over generations. The supply chain operates as a network of workshops rather than a production line. The debut collection launched through Anthropologie with 150 pieces; the brand has since grown to include direct-to-consumer, a full trade program for designers, and a permanent flagship.
In March 2026, the brand moved into a new flagship on Grand Street in SoHo, replacing its original Crosby Street location. The space is arranged as a series of vignettes: new collections placed alongside vintage 20th-century masterworks. A 2025 dining table in European oak next to restored Pierre Jeanneret chairs from Chandigarh. A new brass floor lamp beside a 1950s Gio Ponti side table. The effect is less showroom, more collected home.
“The vintage shows you what this furniture becomes in fifty years,” Lemieux said. “That’s the case for quality. You don’t have to imagine it.”
The brand’s environmental position runs on the same principle. Instead of certifications or recycled inputs, Lemieux et Cie frames longevity as the strategy. “The most sustainable piece of furniture is one you never throw away,” Lemieux has said. Natural stone and solid hardwood get better with age, not worse. Most pieces are made to order, which keeps waste low.
Lemieux has also developed a design philosophy she calls “Homes That Heal,” drawing on neuroaesthetics, the study of how environments shape the way people experience a space, to argue that material and lighting choices shape how a home feels to live in, not just how it looks. The showroom doubles as a community venue, with talks, exhibitions, and events for the design trade running through the year.
The new SoHo showroom is now the brand’s permanent home. Lemieux et Cie calls it Forever Furniture, and at this address, the idea has a room to prove it.
Lemieux et Cie • 161 Grand Street, New York, NY 10013 • lemieuxetcie.com
