Formas - Vintage Home Goods From the Future.

A Community Hub for Creative and Design Focused Individuals.

Natalia Luna and Josh Terris are the founders of Formas, a destination for timeless and nonconformist design. Josh and Natalia’s love for design is contagious, which is something I attribute to their success.  I confess that after chatting with them I spent hours online reading about design periods and seriously considering redecorating my apartment solely with vintage pieces from the Memphis era, a period I am weirdly into right now.  

Natalia and Josh hunt for iconic pieces and curate collections that feel classic, modern, and timeless.

P: What was the idea behind Formas? 

J: We kind of fell into it.  There was a huge sale at this prop-house in the San Fernando Valley . We were both separately looking at furniture for our new places. Being there felt like being a kid on a candy store. Just endless walls of every piece of furniture you’ve seen in books. It was crazy, iconic, and overwhelming. And of course, we bought too much… so we just put what we wanted in our house and we started selling the rest. Then it just snowballed and became an addiction of finding and curating furniture. 

N: We’ve always been into design. I had already started an Instagram account and was researching and posting information about iconic chairs. So that was happening before Formas.  When we arrived to this sale every single chair that I had written about was there, so we started purchasing them. Being at that sale really sparked the love we had for design and art. We started to sell to move the inventory that we already had, we knew that we just didn’t want to fall into a resell business. We wanted to do something that was beautifully photographed and curated. So the idea behind it is kind of us curating, collecting and collaborating with our friends who are also creatives. We wanted to be a space that brings accessibility to really good design so we try to have it at a relatively good price point. We want to be aspirational but pretty relatable.

P: How do you curate the pieces, is there a process behind it? 

J: It’s kind of when we find them, it is not seasonal like a normal store. We manifest what we’d like to find and weirdly enough, we do. Throughout our research we also get into old ceramic pieces, posters, decoration items, etc.

N: There is no real process behind it except us trying to find pieces that we have always loved. That is why our curation comes across to other people because it is truly things that we’ve always wanted to find and the selling is secondary.

P: Is there a personal purpose in doing what you guys do?

J: Part of the reason why we do what we do is because we want people to have these pieces for a very long time and know that if they end up getting rid of them they have a value and could go to someone else’s home. 

N: We are very conscious of what we consume, so we wanted to do the same with what we curate and collect. I am not opposed to fast-furniture because I know some people buy it because of the price point, but we are being a lot more conscious with what we are selling. 

J: And we like to have different price ranges. It is not only crazy designers sofas, we also have smaller objects that people can purchase. We like to have different price points so that everyone can afford it. 

P: When it comes to furniture design, the chair is always the most complex and talked about item, the foundation of everything. In your opinion what are the top 3 chairs ever designed. 

N & J: We love Frank Ghery’s Wiggle Chair, the Red and Blue Chair by Gerrit Rietveld, which we have already crossed off our list, and Gaetano Pesce's Pratt Chair. 

J: Those are timeless, fun, and…probably comfortable. 

N: All of those chairs are timeless, unconventional, iconic and they all have a fun element. The Wiggle Chair is swirly and made out of cardboard, the red and blue chair is just sleek and the other one is made with urethane resin. 

P: What’s the next thing on your list? 

J: We are actually looking for a Wiggle Chair!

P: Not to share your secret with the world, but how do you source these items? 

J: Mostly through word of mouth, searching on the internet or traveling. We once went to New Mexico to see a friend that knew all the right places. It is all about our community. His neighbor had the most amazing “junk” on his backyard, we found there an UMBO shelf and it kind of blew our minds because we had been looking forever for it.

N: We are looking everywhere. We sometimes stay up until 5 am doing really intense Google searches. It could be anything, really, from shipping something from Europe to finding things in our friends backyards.

P: What’s your favorite design period? 

N: For me it's pretty hard to choose. When we first started I could have said Italian designers from the 70s. But collecting and curating furniture has broaden my interests and now I’m looking at very rustic pieces from the 80s. As you dive more into furniture design you start realizing there is a really big range of things that are cool in their own ways so we are really open to different styles. We don’t want to stay in one lane.

J: We have a lot of Postwar Italian pieces, that is one of my favorites for sure.

P: What trends are you seeing for the future? 

J: A lot of people are really into Italian Space Age at the moment. We personally really like Patina — really rustic things. We have been seeing a lot of that and gravitating towards it. That rusted look tells a story by its own. It is cool that it has been around for so long.

N: When we started we were really into clean things, a lot of plastics. Now we are looking for things that almost look destroyed, like steel metal.  Also, Italian iconic sofas are a huge trend at the moment.

P: Do you think people pay more attention now to the things they bring into their homes? 

N: We started Formas Pre-Covid and during the pandemic it was a “boom”, which is something that kept us going. People started to look into their homes because they were there for so long. 

J: We even did that. It is very human to want to change the things you are seeing all day. 

N: I think the internet also played a big role because people were sitting at home looking at inspirational photos, so that awoke something in people; to find these vintage designer pieces that they kept seeing on photos like the TOGO’s or the Camaleonda Sofa from Mario Bellini. People saw those items all over Instagram and Pinterest and they were like “I need it”. 

J: Big companies have even tapped into it and are recreating the pieces.  Even the original dealers like B&B Italia are reissuing a lot of older 70s designs.

P: What are your thoughts on people recreating these iconic pieces themselves “DIY”? 

J: I think that is amazing! If you can find joy in creating anything, go for it.

N: I am open to that. There are a lot of great designers who actually share the blueprints of their designs so that people can recreate them, it creates a sense of community. Like with the Red and Blue Chair of Gerrit Rietveld.

P: What is the piece everyone should invest in? 

J: Probably a Sofa. If you keep it nice it will always hold its value. 

N: It is such an important piece, because we literally do everything there: we sleep, we eat, we host people, we work. We spend most of our days in a sofa.

P: Will you create a collection of your own at some point?

N: We’ve been thinking about it but we want to do it at the right time. We are slowly thinking about creating our own pieces, not necessarily furniture, but maybe home goods. 

J: Maybe even like a collaboration with some artist.