Corsetto: Cristián Mohaded’s sculptural embrace for Molteni&C

The armchair arrives as a study in contradiction resolved through pure design intention. Cristián Mohaded’s Corsetto possesses the generous, enveloping volume of a form designed to cradle the body, yet it is held together by the disciplined geometry of a leather belt that wraps upward from base to armrests like a corset drawing inward. The tension between these opposing impulses creates something far more compelling than comfort alone: it produces a piece of furniture with personality, with narrative, with the quiet authority of an object that has been thought through with precision.

For the Argentinian designer’s first collaboration with Molteni&C, the house known for its refined mastery of domestic proportion and material expression, Corsetto represents a conversation between two sensibilities. Mohaded brings a distinct aesthetic to a studio renowned for its calibrated elegance and structural clarity. The armchair emerges from this exchange as a singular object: rounded and full in its body, yes, but organised by that ascending leather element that creates structure and visual tension in equal measure. It is neither purely sculptural nor purely functional, existing instead in that rarified space where form and purpose become indistinguishable.

The leather belt functions as more than ornamentation. It is the piece’s skeleton, the element that gives definition and presence to what might otherwise dissolve into formlessness. It rises with quiet authority, tightening the silhouette as it moves upward, supporting the armrests and creating a kind of architectural frame within the rounded body. There is something almost architectural about this gesture, a sense of compression and release that speaks to sophisticated spatial thinking.

The Corsetto inhabits a particular moment in contemporary design where the desire for sensual, embracing forms meets an equally compelling need for restraint and precision. This armchair refuses sentimentality. Its rounded volume is not meant to comfort through abundance but through the purity of its proportions. The leather detail introduces a second vocabulary, one of structure and definition, ensuring that the piece reads as intentional, controlled, deliberate.

To sit in the Corsetto is to understand the philosophy behind its conception. The form wraps around you with genuine generosity, yet you are held within a composed framework. It is enclosure without claustrophobia, embrace without excess. For Molteni&C, which has long understood that luxury lives in the marriage of material intelligence and spatial clarity, this debut from Mohaded feels entirely at home in a collection that has always celebrated the extraordinary made to appear inevitable.

Imagery courtesy of Molteni&C (@molteniandc).