Why a frameless lounge chair begins with material, not trend

I still remember exactly where I was when the idea for the lounge chair came to me. It was November 2023, and I was standing in the living room of my partner Kay. We were discussing the modular sofa I had been trying to design for nearly a year. I kept circling around the idea, but nothing felt right. It either lacked originality, didn’t feel sustainable enough, or simply didn’t hold together as a whole.

It frustrated me. There are already so many lounge chairs. So many sofas. What value would mine add to what already exists?

Back then, I had just transitioned from my previous company, Mariekke Vintage, where I dealt in high-end vintage furniture. I had handled dozens of classics pieces that were 40, sometimes 60 years old and still beautiful. What always irritated me, though, was the foam. No matter how good the design, the cushions had degraded. I had to replace the filling in almost every piece I sold. It made me wonder: why are we still designing chairs that fall apart from the inside?

That night, as I voiced these frustrations, Kay said something that shifted everything. “Why don’t you go back to the basics? What have we been doing for centuries? What’s the actual core of a chair?”

That hit a nerve. I’d been designing from the outside in thinking about form, trend, silhouette. But that’s not where real value lives. That’s decoration. Not design.

Kay also reminded me of a deeper issue: most furniture today is impossible to recycle. Layers of glue, mixed materials, hidden foams and plastic supports. Once it’s made, it’s nearly impossible to take apart. He told me something else, too: in the Netherlands, wool is considered a waste product. Each year, over 1.5 million kilos of Dutch wool are discarded because it’s too coarse for fashion and too time-consuming to process. That was the missing piece.

I thought of the oldest material we sleep on: wool. It springs back. It insulates. And it holds its structure for life.

That same night I started researching traditional wool mattresses, how they’re capitonned, shaped under tension to hold their form. That technique sparked the idea. What if I could create a chair entirely from wool? No foam. No frame. No glue. Just a single, natural material brought into form by tension.

I sketched the first idea right there in the living room. The knot would be the anchor point literally pulling the wool into structure. That knot became the chair. A single gesture. A circular design.

It wasn’t just about the shape anymore. It was about function, longevity, and meaning.

But the moment the concept clicked, I felt something else too: urgency.

After months of struggling to find the right direction, something shifted. I didn’t want to wait. I knew this design had to be shown. So I set myself a deadline an ambitious one. I wanted to present the frameless lounge chair during Milan Design Week 2024.

That left me with just five months. Five months to test the shape, research techniques, source wool, build a full-scale prototype, apply to the fair, plan a photo shoot, and launch a website. And all of it had to be done without compromising the essence of the idea: a chair not designed from form or trend, but from material, technique and function.

There was no room for fluff. No time for second-guessing. But I felt something I hadn’t felt in a while: trust in the work.

Two weeks before Milan, the chair was finished.

I packed it into my camper van and drove to Italy myself. It was a wild mix of nerves and momentum but I arrived on time. We had just enough time to shoot the final photos.

And then something happened I’ll never forget.

During my very first international launch, Queen Máxima came to visit the exhibition—and sat down in my chair.

That moment said more than words ever could. The frameless lounge chair had gone from an unresolved frustration to a finished, functional object. Not because I followed trends. But because I trusted the process, the material and the urgency of doing it differently.

Sometimes you don’t have time to overthink.
When the idea for the frameless lounge chair finally clicked, I knew I had to move fast. I didn’t wait for the perfect supplier or the ideal conditions. I drove straight to a local farmer, picked up raw Dutch wool, and washed it myself just to understand how it behaved.

This was the starting point. A rough material, an intuitive sketch, and a series of form studies. I was designing to see if this could work. If one material; just wool could hold both softness and structure.

Looking back, these first moments still carry the essence of the final design: direct, functional, and grounded in material truth.

Today, that early idea has become a frameless lounge chair built entirely from natural wool filling, wrapped in a cover made of recycled deadstock yarns. There is no hidden core. No foam to break down. No glued structure that locks it in place forever.

The chair offers resistance and softness at the same time. You can sit cross-legged, curl up, or stretch out. It responds. It holds. And with basic care—like airing out the wool or fluffing it occasionally, it will keep doing that for decades.

Explore our wool lounge chair for natural support.

I didn’t want to recreate a vintage look. I wanted to design something honest. Something that responds to the moment we’re living in.

People are tired of fast furniture. Of pieces that look good on day one but disintegrate within five years. What they want—what I want—is design that respects the home, the body, and the future.

Even though I never intended it, a subtle 1970s feeling emerged in the shape of the Ida lounge chair. It wasn’t a reference, but a consequence of the curves, the grounded volume, the material logic. That sense of calm and softness from the past found its way in, naturally.

That’s why I believe the frameless lounge chair is more than a product. It’s a new way of thinking. About what comfort means. About how softness and structure can co-exist. About making furniture that holds its shape and its story.

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