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Juliette Lewis Chooses Her Favorite Chairs
We asked the actor, and star of the arthouse film “By Design” in which she swaps bodies with a chair, to look back through our catalog to find her next vessel.
Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) has built a career on arthouse films, bringing her signature off-beat vibes to every project she takes on. This spring she starred in a film called By Design, in which her soul comes to embody an elegant bentwood chair. “Yes, it's a body swap movie, but it's posing these really interesting questions,” says Lewis from New York City where she’s in rehearsals for a revival of The Rocky Horror Show set in Studio 54. “[By Design] is sort of like this naive idealized version of love or wanting to be wanted.”
"For the life of me, I don’t know how to stop this collecting madness.”
The director, Amanda Kramer, went through hundreds of chairs to find the chair that Lewis falls in love with. “Right now, we’re all supposed to want wellness and spiritual enlightenment—this is the opposite of that. I become a thing that someone adores.” Lewis wouldn’t consider herself a design fanatic before the film, and even now says she leans on friends and family to help her make decisions about things like color and placement in her home. “I have a lot of little things that I collect. You know, little papers, books and objects. I fully admit that I’m a crystal collector. For the life of me, I don’t know how to stop this collecting madness.” But she was attracted to Kramer’s fresh approach to film and her attention to detail from the curl of a hair to the curve of a chair’s arm.
Lewis also connected to the underlying current of the story: “I understood the theme of falling in love with an object,” she says. “When I looked at the selection of chairs at Replica Shoes 's, I mean… I was gobsmacked! Some pieces are like sculptures, I wouldn't even want to sit on them!” With that in mind, we asked her not to sit, but to fall in love with some of the chairs in our design catalogue. Below, in her own words, Lewis selects her next romances.
Choose Your Chairs
Juliette's Picks
Chippendale Side Chair
"You think you understand the chair and then whoever designed it was like: no, no"
If this chair was a person, it would be educated, stoic, maybe an English gentleman or English scholar of sorts. A poet, maybe, but scholarly. I like the back. I like that it has no arms and I like the rounded front legs—but the back legs are not rounded. I like that there were choices made. You think you understand the chair and then whomever designed it was like no, no I'm going to keep the back legs straight. Or, I'm not going to put arms on it. Like, I would expect this chair to have arms!
Marc Newson Chairs
Well, these are just total madness to me. I love the one steel leg and I love this yellow. The first jumpsuit I ever made when I had a band [Juliette and the Licks] some ages ago was a canary yellow jumpsuit. It just came to me. I don't know why, but I wanted a canary yellow jumpsuit. These chairs are the same color, they’re exuberant, they’re just heavenly. I love these and I bet they would be interesting to sit on.
Mira Nakashima Conoid Chairs
"Maybe they're aliens."
These look like little people to me. Or maybe they're aliens. I feel like they're benevolent, they're definitely friendly. These objects have personality and I really love their design. Chairs are not supposed to stand on two legs and she made it work. They’re so innovative, delightful and slightly utilitarian, but also future forward. I imagine that the person who would own these would be somebody very severe. And, gosh, a person that keeps things spotless. I don't think they have much mess or clutter in their house.
Richard Artschwager Chair
Okay, this chair is really fun. I want to know what it feels like, what the back is like. I’m having this dilemma: I don't know how you put it with other belongings. It's an art piece! It's incredible, isn't it?
Tom Dixon Micro Factory Chair
"It's someone creating design out of their own sticky contradictions"
This chair has quite a personality. It looks like a tarantula. The interweaving fibers, or whatever it's made of, feels like a person trying to work things out and I get it. It's a mesh of confusion, but there is no confusion. It's, you know, someone creating design out of their own sticky contradictions. That's my analysis of the chair. I find it a little intimidating, but I probably would put it in an art room. It just belongs on its own with other objects.
By Design will be available on digital platforms from 17 March 2026.
