Concorde's luxury designer and boutique hotel pioneer Andree Putman dies at 87
Her creativity was writ large - in Concorde jets, boutique hotels and even a luxury tower in HK
Andree Putman 1925-2013
The internationally acclaimed French designer Andree Putman, whose many achievements include revamping the interior of the Concorde jet, died at her Paris home. She was 87.
Putman helped coin the concept of the boutique hotel, gave her name to a skyscraper in Hong Kong, and designed movie sets and designer stores in a career that spanned nearly seven decades.
Seen by many as the Grande Dame of French design, she was the subject of a retrospective at Paris city hall in 2010.
Her daughter, Olivia, who now runs the Putman design studio and who curated the show, said Putman "became a style ambassador in spite of herself - she just did her own thing, she would never have claimed such a role".
From her upbringing in a wealthy, art-loving home on Paris's Left Bank, to summers spent in the family's historic abbey in Burgundy, Putman was born into a world of refinement.
But her first design project - her bedroom - marked a break with her milieu when, aged 15, she emptied it to get rid of all objects associated with the social-status-conscious past.