Designer Andrée Putman recently returned to Morgans, the ur-boutique hotel she masterminded for Ian Schrager back in 1984, to lead a complete renovation of the property. Putman aimed to keep her original "home away from home" aesthetic while bringing the hotel into the 21st century. Enter the Putman-commissioned art installation on the lobby ceiling (the work of Trafik, the French design collective), lighter and brighter guest rooms (their minimalist purity intact, if slightly softened at the edges), a mess of technological upgrades, and 300 Putman-designed "Morgans" chairs in high-gloss white. The all-aluminum chairs are manufactured by Emeco, those Pennsylvania-based aluminum wizards known for their Navy chairs and successful collaborations with the likes of Philippe Starck and Frank Gehry.

In designing the Morgans chair (pictured above), Putman went for a hybrid of the iconic Robert Mallet-Stevens chair she used in the hotel's original design and Emeco's Navy chair. "She told me she wanted to do with for the Emeco chair what her friend Coco Chanel did with the little black dress—create a simple, smart, sexy chair that never goes out of style," said Emeco chairman Gregg Buchbinder in a statement issued by the company. He also mentioned that Putman, 83, arrived at the first project meeting wearing six-inch stilettos. heels. You too can never go out of style (and without having to navigate the tricky process of "borrowing" a chair from the Morgans Hotel): the chair make its world debut in a few weeks at Maison & Objet in Paris.