LENNY KRAVITZ, REUPHOLSTERED

For Lenny Kravitz, design was never a side hustle; it was just another instrument. His firm, Kravitz Design, founded in 2003, has quietly been riffing for over 20 years, amounting to nearly two-thirds of his music career. “You start with nothing and end up with a statement,” he once told Architectural Digest. “It’s all the same thing with music in my head.”

Kravitz’s personal interiors always feel less decorated than composed. In Golden Beach, Miami, circa 2000, Architröpolis turned Kravitz’s glassy modern villa into a funk palace: mirrored walls, touches of Verner Panton in pink, purple, and orange, and shag carpeting so deep you could misplace a shoe. It was Miami-as-fever-dream, fully Y2K. Then, when he turned his gaze to Paris, Kravitz leaned into grandeur. In the 2000s he acquired a hôtel particulier in the 16th arrondissement and remade it into what he calls a refuge of “soulful elegance.” Here, Parisian gilt collides with his rock-and-roll nerve: African artifacts, custom lighting, secret passageways to a recording booth, plush rooms for living and performing in the same breath. If the Miami house screamed, the Paris one purred. (This doesn’t even begin to describe his other homes in Beverly Hills and elsewhere.)

Similarly to his varied taste in homes, Kravitz has an eclectic taste in design objects, and he’s also always conceived his own furniture. In 2015 he created his first collection for CB2 — a 20-piece limited edition with a glam-70s edge (think silver sheepskin-topped stools, origami black-and-gold tables). In 2019 he returned with a broader line that was more globally textured, leaning into his nomadic design influences.

Now on his third collaboration with CB2, Kravitz has distilled his style into something sleeker, lighter, but still loaded. The new drop, which was released in September, is a 62-piece capsule of furniture, rugs, lighting, decor, and serveware. The look is “midcentury modern” — teak, travertine, suede — but unmistakably “Lenny” in its moods and undertones. “It’s about creating an environment where you can let things breathe,” he says. Photographed in Craig Ellwood’s 1957 Hunt House in Malibu, the pieces play the hits: low-slung silhouettes, expensive neutrals, and names that remind us where Kravitz drew his inspiration from this time around (Rohe table anyone?). 

The crescendo of the CB2 collection is the Kanan sofa — a sleek, low-slung upholstered piece that channels Italian design sensibilities with deep dimensions and bold tufting. Sofas are a central pillar of Kravitz’s design philosophy, if not an obsession. “I have a couch fetish,” he demurs. “I don’t have enough rooms for all the couches I love.” The Kanan accomplishes that elusive balance that Kravitz is always searching for: “sleek, bold, and super comfortable with minimal lines.” The Kanan delivers exactly that: an object of pure ease that still carries the charge of Kravitzian performance.