Inside Laila Gohar’s Eccentric, Elegant World
The artist and designer, recently named The Luxury Collection’s newest Global Explorer, brings an appreciation for tradition to her slyly refined work, as seen in a new barware collaboration.
What defines a Laila Gohar experience? For the New York–based artist and designer known for her high-profile food installations, it’s less about a signature dish. Instead, the phrase house codes comes to mind—a concept rooted in legacy fashion brands, whereby the use of pastel tweed or horsebit hardware instantly pinpoints the maker. In Gohar’s case, such hallmarks of her work straddle the commonplace and the fanciful: dried sausages and new potatoes, Battenburg lace and satin bows. This past April, at one of the visual feasts she presented during Milan’s Salone del Mobile, a tidy column of raw haricots verts lay stitched together with twine—unmistakably Gohar’s doing. She cheekily termed it “green bean bondage,” a nod to the appealing ambiguity of the hand-tied knots.
“There are these sorts of little transgressions,” Gohar says, with a glint in her eye. She is sitting by the lace-curtained windows of her Lower East Side creative studio, where she dreams up edible tableaux for design galleries and fashion brands. The space also doubles as headquarters for Gohar World, the home-goods line that she and her sister, Nadia, launched last year. An international vein runs through more than the brand name. There’s the founders’ upbringing in Cairo, where their grandmother lately helps shepherd production for Gohar World’s hand-worked table linens: some practical (crochet-trimmed placemats), others pure whimsy (prim aprons scaled for wine bottles). There’s the far-flung customer base, as evidenced by the shipping boxes stacked by the front door, the Gohar World logo shaped like a bean—a staple foodstuff in just about every culture. And there’s an old-world reverence for taking care, for honoring the makers alongside the guests. “I come from a place where hospitality is taken really seriously, in Egypt and the surrounding area,” says Gohar, who enjoys preparing home-cooked lunches for the studio in that same spirit of community. “It’s a matter of pride.”
Gohar’s magpie interest in design and local customs makes her appointment as The Luxury Collection’s latest Global Explorer feel particularly attuned. She brings a newcomer’s curiosity to places woven into the fabric of pop culture. (In her mind, Los Angeles—drenched in sunshine, with a patchwork of microcosmic landscapes—feels “exotic,” she says, describing a time she stumbled across an unfamiliar apple varietal, called Ashmead’s Kernel, and stuffed a suitcase with them.) Further afield, she likes to orient herself in new cities by rather unfussy means. “Just to go into a basic supermarket, I think, is a really interesting way to see everyday life,” she says, in contrast to a well-trodden loop of bookmarked sites. “I really enjoy the coincidence of stumbling upon something when you’re traveling. I like to do a minimal amount of planning, but then just let things unfold.”
Inspiration strikes in unexpected moments. That is one of the hidden pleasures in Gohar’s six-piece barware collaboration with The Luxury Collection, centered around three cities the hotel group calls home: Los Angeles, Paris, and Kyoto. In homage to Beverly Hills lore, there’s a martini glass in mouth-blown crystal, with geometric lines that recall the city’s modernist architecture. An accompanying cocktail pick—hand-hammered and silver-plated, like jewelry for a stack of olives—takes its spiral design from an ornamental gate Gohar spotted at the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Ennis House. Paris gets a featherweight Champagne coupe, paired with lace-and-organza napkins seemingly out of a Manet painting. And for Kyoto, sake cups with delicate green decoration suit the drink of choice, with a bamboo taketorei tray rounding out the assortment. In typical Gohar fashion, she feted the collection with a home-cooked dinner in her Tribeca loft, capped off with plates of profiteroles illuminated by sparklers—childlike whimsy, all dressed up.
“With my collaboration with The Luxury Collection, it was important to highlight craft and local artisans and create objects for celebrating everyday life,” explains Gohar, who tapped the generations-old Austrian firm Lobmeyr to make the glassware and found a Kyoto porcelain manufacturer for the sake cups. The underlying ethos makes them kindred spirits: “I see them sort of as a family of objects.” The barware collection brings more than a souvenir’s sense of place to the table. It’s also a reminder that cocktail hour itself—more easily observed on vacation—can be a worthwhile ritual, whether it’s Champagne or a non-alcoholic spritz. (Gohar has shared a handful of cocktail recipes to that point.) “So much of our lives are dictated by our schedules, so it’s nice to have a break from that and just exist without an agenda,” says Gohar, who sees the apéritif tradition as something of a reset button. “It’s an important moment to just slow down.”