News·November 9, 2026

A Design Fair That Moved Into a Former Upper East Side Cinema

Collectible's third New York edition brought more than 110 exhibitors from 27 countries to a former movie theater on East 86th Street, with an office fantasy curated by Alex Tieghi-Walker and a fashion section curated by Lynette Nylander.

By Chris Force

News·November 9, 2026

Collectible spent its first two New York editions in the WSA building downtown. For its third, the fair moved to November, the same week as BDNY and Salon Art + Design, and uptown to 210 East 86th Street, a former movie theater with projection booths and screening rooms. More than 110 exhibitors from 27 countries filled it from November 6-8, after press and VIP previews on November 4-5.

Liv Vaisberg and Clélie Debehault founded Collectible in Brussels in 2018 as a fair for 21st-century design only, with galleries, independent studios, and institutions in one open space. In New York it runs in sections: Main for galleries, Bespoke for studios working to commission, New Garde for collectives and not-for-profits founded within the past three years, and two curated sections. Mzwakhe Ndlovu designed the fair’s scenography, with exhibition architecture by Thomas Ponds.

The Office as Fantasy

Alex Tieghi-Walker, founder of the downtown gallery TIWA Select, built the Curated section as Human Resources, a late 20th-century office reimagined through collectible design. “Arranged as a series of office cells, the installation adopts the recognizable layout of a conventional workplace, only to fill it with objects that challenge its uniformity,” he said.

An office-like installation with a long steel table, a stainless cabinet, a corrugated plastic divider and a bone-shaped stool. — Human Resources set Christian Borger‘s corrugated polycarbonate room divider near Studio B.C. Joshua’s Juke Joint Cabinet, which reuses aluminum cut from its shell as inlays in reclaimed oak and ash. Human Resources also included apt4b’s Recess Chair, built on a school chair frame salvaged from a Queens street, and Ciane Xavier’s fiberglass Soft Bones Stool. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

Andrew McAteer hammered a Louis XIV-style carry-on suitcase from aluminum sheet and lined it in red Moroccan leather. Romain Basile Petrot’s Break a Leg chair stands on its two back legs, a nod to Giotto Stoppino’s Alessia chair. Kristina Saakyan of KS Architects showed The Burned-Out Archive, a mirrored steel bar cabinet that plays on the Wall Street safety deposit vault. Chimera Design lent a red-stained oak conference table it had built for a client with no plan to exhibit it. The studio called Human Resources “the first context that feels like a natural fit for sharing it publicly.”

Furniture for Fashion

Lynette Nylander, executive digital director of Harper’s Bazaar and a former executive editorial director of Dazed, curated the Fashion section around furniture and spatial ideas made for runways and retail. “Fashion to me has always been a marvel of human ingenuity,” Lynette said.

Furniture on a yellow floor between block walls, with a black low table, a lattice floor lamp and a tall illuminated sculpture. — Ceren Arslan designed the scenography for the Fashion section, which included the Bridge Table from Andrew Sun‘s debut collection, in blackened ash with curved legs drawn from Chinese garden bridges, and Pestacle’s L3 Floor Lamp in textured concrete and acrylic. Photo courtesy of Collectible

Adam Terrett had a silo maker in the sugar cane fields of northern New South Wales fabricate his Static Chair from standard stainless steel sections, then upholstered it in tie-dyed recycled wool. Mary Elizabeth Alford‘s Pointe Chair, part of a vanity set, takes its mirrored stainless steel shell from the metal disk dresses of Paco Rabanne’s 12 Unwearable Dresses collection. Lærke Laura set glass fragments rejected from production into a blown-glass candelabrum, and Teresa Wang encased a peony in the glass of her Bird’s Nest Sconce.

A long reclining wooden chair draped with a grey shag rug, with a charred black mirror hung on a white curtain behind it. — Amaraki Studio’s padauk Adeebae Chair, with six seating positions, sits across from Gábor Góbi‘s Burning Mirror, carved from a salvaged window frame and charred by the yakisugi technique. Photo courtesy of Collectible

A chair covered in cascading cream fringe beside a translucent folding screen and a wooden side table. — HEGI hand-sewed more than 4,000 yarn threads, one by one, into the hardwood frame of its Le Drape chair. RIKFRANSJANSEN’s Soft Touch screen, in aluminum, galvanized steel and polycarbonate, is about dressing and undressing. Photo courtesy of Collectible

The Main Galleries

Objekt brought a survey of Polish collectible design across generations. Colony, exhibiting for the first time, showed new textile works by Anjuli Bernstein with lounge chairs by independent designers. Jamieri, a gallery from upstate New York, showed bent stainless steel mirrors by Studio Gypsandconcrete from Tbilisi, Georgia.

A gallery booth with silver furniture, wire wall sculptures and a chair of polished steel and wooden rods. — Objekt set a chair by Paweł Grunert at the front of its booth, the view Collectible chose to announce its third New York edition. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

A pale woven wall hanging with long fringe and a faded, cloud-like pattern. — Anjuli Bernstein weaves pictorial tapestries from unexpected materials, and *Stratus (Into Fog)* is one of her new works for Colony. Photo courtesy of Colony

A folded copper-colored metal form with spiked edges holding three tall, thin candles. — Jamieri also showed The Candleholder by Studio Gypsandconcrete, photographed in the studio before the fair. Photo by Lasha Gigauri, courtesy of Jamieri

Placed, from Montana, titled its presentation A Future for History.

A woman in a dark dress stands beside a sculptural chair. — Coryander Friend built Placed’s presentation around her reading of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Placed

A pink glazed ceramic vase with a carved face and twisting blue handles. — Placed paired Faye Hadfield‘s ceramics, including *Scary Vase in Grapefruit*, with a chainmail lampshade by Wretched Flowers. Photo by Faye Hadfield, courtesy of Placed

K’ab Juun made its Collectible debut with new work in materials endemic to Mexico. Tuleste Factory staged After Ours, and Otras Formas, which showed at the first New York edition in 2024, came back.

A brown-walled booth with low carved stone and wood tables, brass pendant lights and lamps on pedestals. — K’ab Juun’s presentation looked at how materials carry time, place and process into contemporary collectible design. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

A wood-paneled room with a painted cabinet, wavy mirrors, a long table, cylindrical stools and wall sculptures. — Tuleste Factory built *After Ours* as a cinematic setting meant to evoke the glamour of the 1970s. Photo by Matthew Gordon, courtesy of Tuleste Factory

A table with a wavy striped top, two orange cylindrical stools, a painting and wall sconces against wood paneling. — Tuleste Factory co-founder Celeste Greenberg also played a late-night DJ set at the Aman Jazz Club during the fair. Photo by Matthew Gordon, courtesy of Tuleste Factory

A bright booth with a cream sofa, an oval mirror, a pendant light and dark side tables. — Otras Formas came uptown from its gallery in Chelsea. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

Of the Cloth brought Brianna Love‘s Annie comb chair series, inspired by her grandmother, with textiles by Shradha Kochhar. Freaks, from Hudson, hung glass and silk pendants, made with antique pleat molds, that recall 19th-century service bells. Costantini, nearing its 25th anniversary, staged re/iterate with live clay sessions led by founder William C. Stuart. The studio invited visitors to sculpt forms for the next edition of its Constantin series and planned to cast its favorites in bronze.

A dark metal table set with stones and small objects in front of a glowing striped stone column. — Costantini’s *re/iterate* turned steel remnants into sculpture and individual modules into architectural surfaces. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

A white booth with a wall sculpture, a shearling bench, a long table and a pendant lamp. — Costantini’s presentation also included work by Théophane Ingold and Mirei Monticelli. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

Made to Order

In Bespoke, Katja Pargger showed furniture, lighting and objects from ITEMS, a series that grew out of her architecture practice. Streicher Goods and Jesse Shaw paired handmade furniture with a sculptural mirror and large ceramic vessels. Ian Love brought new work in stack-laminated wood, Studio Tôduy inlaid a dark wood cabinet, side table and mirror with Vietnamese mother-of-pearl, and Tennant New York showed Oceania Mania, a family of handmade fixtures inspired by the South Seas.

A booth with a white shaggy daybed on a black platform, a standing mirror, a robe on a stand and a small table lamp. — Katja Pargger, who came to New York from France, was one of 25 studios in the Bespoke section. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

A table lamp with a pale stitched shade on a slim column and a dark wooden base. — Katja Pargger’s Skin Series lamp is one of the lighting pieces in *ITEMS*. Photo by Mathilde Hiley, courtesy of Katja Pargger

Round textile wall pieces above a low blue and steel bench in a white booth. — Crina Arghirescu Rogard is one of six new fair ambassadors leading Club Collectible, which connects interior designers and architects with makers. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

Architect Crina Arghirescu Rogard’s booth with AÉ02 looked at Romanian creativity, setting her own sculptural pieces beside work by Alexandra Mocanu and Aurel Cucu.

A dark textile in a light wooden frame above a long steel bench, with small sculptures on the walls. — Crina Arghirescu Rogard’s booth also brought in artists from outside Romania, among them Moffat Takadiwa of Zimbabwe and Fernanda Fragateiro of Portugal. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

New Garde and Special Projects

New Garde included ProRetro, Régime, Room-File, and Salon 21.

A room set with a wooden vanity and round mirror, a long credenza, a glass table on a carved plaster base and a pedestal lamp. — Salon 21 was one of four presenters in New Garde. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

A curved wooden vanity with an oval mirror and a white planter holding red flowers. — New Garde gives each participant a dedicated space for customization and experimentation. Photo by Simon Leung, courtesy of Collectible

Dark metal objects on a concrete floor, including a low grated bench, round discs and a cluster of vertical bars. — Room-File’s group leaned on grey and silver metals, clean lines and geometric shapes, with work by artists including Kouros Maghsoudi and Mitchell Moonde, and this low altar by AB+CB. Photo courtesy of Room-File

Yabu Pushelberg, USM, and Ensemble collaborated on one of the fair’s special projects, with Ensemble’s selection drawn from Canada’s independent design scene.