Australian designer David Hicks has joined forces with bathware brand apaiser to develop the Louis Collection, unveiled at Dubai Design Week. It’s a collaboration shaped by shared sensibilities: Hicks’s architectural storytelling meets apaiser’s long-established craft in sustainable stone, coming together in pieces that feel timeless without reverting to pastiche.
The design references are deliberately layered. Hicks looks to the ceremony and theatricality of Louis XIV’s Versailles bathrooms — spaces that treated bathing as an act of display — and pairs this with the quieter modern elegance of Albert Rateau’s 1920s work, including Jeanne Lanvin’s now-iconic marble bathroom. The result is a series of forms that feel grounded, sculptural and softly detailed.
The collection includes a bathtub, counter and pedestal basins, a stool and bath caddy, each handcrafted in apaiserMarble®, a stone composite made from repurposed marble and stone. The material has a calm, tactile presence and the pieces are available in Hicks’s signature Alabaster as well as 18 tones from apaiser’s House Palette.
For both Hicks and apaiser, the collaboration is as much about process as outcome. Hicks brings his narrative approach to form, while apaiser contributes decades of technical refinement from its atelier. The partnership underscores a shared belief that restraint, craft and clarity of intent produce designs with longevity.
The Louis Collection sits at the point where historical influence meets present-day ritual — an exploration of bathing not just as necessity, but as a considered moment within the home.
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