For the VIP lounge at this year’s Decorex, Claudia Dorsch created a ski chalet complete with open fire and après ski club

The chalet is changing. Once defined by dark timber and alpine clichés, the mountain home is being rethought as something more considered, more architectural and designed to be lived in all year round. It is a shift that London-based designer Claudia Dorsch is at the forefront of, and one she brought to life at Decorex 2026

Claudia’s VIP Lounge, Back to the Future, The Chalet Reimagined, felt like a real chalet inside the exhibition hall, drawing on the heritage of alpine architecture and the glamour of 1970s European ski culture across Switzerland, France and Italy. Claudia says, “I wanted visitors to slow down and experience Alpine rituals. We have built a home inside an exhibition hall and my hope is that once you step through the curtain you forget that entirely and simply feel you are somewhere in the mountains, in a house that has been lived in for years.”

The title describes how Claudia has always worked – looking back at how people lived and what the makers of the past invented, then adapting those ideas for the way we live now. She had no interest in recreating a traditional chalet and just as little in designing what she calls “a luxury hotel that happens to be in the mountains”. Claudia says, “One repeats history. The other ignores it. I wanted a third way. Not nostalgia. Reinterpretation.” The 1970s reference is deliberate and easily misread. Claudia says, “Look closely at the ski photography of that era and you will see that not everyone in it is expensively dressed. What they share is the luxury of enjoying life: outdoors all day, around a table all evening, music, good food and the company of friends. That is a richness measured in time and pleasure, not in money.”

To access the VIP lounge guests passed through a fur-clad entrance and a shimmering silvered metal curtain, supplied by Amron Architectural, the curtain was made by the Catalan house Kriskadecor, founded in Montblanc in 1926

At the centre of the chalet, a sculptural suspended fireplace by French maker JC Bordelet, supplied by Caleo, became the natural gathering point, with four curved seating quarters drawn around it in the spirit of the great 1970s conversation pits. “Place the fire,” says Claudia, “and the room arranges itself.”

The sofas, armchairs, poufs and bespoke banquettes were upholstered by Ben Whistler Blue Label in bouclé, sheepskin and leather, with fabrics from Kirkby, Pierre Frey, Dedar and Misia Paris. Behind the banquette, House of Hackney’s Plantasia wallpaper in tobacco brought the forest indoors

Above, the lighting was layered with intent. Cameron Design House’s sculptural Vetta hung over the fireplace, while its Pilvi clusters were suspended above the bar’s seating areas, and Pooky’s rechargeable wall and picture lights brought a quieter glow throughout

To one side a bespoke bar in backlit onyx and burr walnut by Orange Tree Joinery set the scene for arrival and celebration. To the other, the Mountain Terrace, where the pace slows and the après-ski begins. A DJ set the soundtrack for long afternoons from a customisable console by Club Kiva, while guests settle into striped deckchairs. Overhead, Tom Dixon’s Melt pendants anchor the terrace, referencing molten rock and melting ice

Throughout, the chalet featured a carefully curated collection of artworks, ceramics, glass and sculpture which Claudia commissioned and selected from galleries McKay Williamson, 99 Concepts and Nadia Waterfield Fine Art. She says, “A house that carries no evidence of the people who loved it is not yet a home, The success of an interior is never measured by how beautifully it photographs. It is measured by how deeply it is remembered.”

See more of Claudia’s work here