Header: Courtesy of VAIN
LOVE BUBBLE is a hanging chair in clear acrylic, with a heart-shaped carabiner holding its chain and the same image stitched onto the seat cushion. It was made by Eero Aarnio Originals, the Finnish company that has held the exclusive production and sales rights to Aarnio’s classic designs since 2016, together with VAIN, a Helsinki fashion brand founded in 2022.
Sixty-six years separate the birth of Eero Aarnio and VAIN’s co-founder and creative director Jimi Vain, with this iconic design uniting them.
Bubble’s background
The chair that started this whole project is the Bubble, which Aarnio designed in 1968, five years after his Ball Chair. He wanted a transparent ball “where light comes from all directions“, and he knew that acrylic could be heated and blown into shape, the same way dome skylights were made at the time. A manufacturer confirmed it could be done at the size of a chair, so the shell is quite literally blown into a steel ring, like a soap bubble that has been stopped mid-air.
The chair does not stand on anything because, in Aarnio’s own words, “there is no nice way to make a clear pedestal“. He hung it from the ceiling on a chain, which also solved the problem of a base blocking the light he wanted coming in from underneath. The finished piece measures 103 cm wide, 90 cm deep and 105 cm high, weighs 22 kgs, comes with a 2 metre chain as standard, and holds up to 200 kgs despite how fragile it looks.
The Bubble has spent most of its life in front of cameras, having appeared in a large number of fashion editorials over more than 50 years: it has been photographed on the covers of Playboy and has been sat in by Donatella Versace, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Courteney Cox and Rihanna.
VAIN’s vision
When the project started, VAIN thought that the original chair’s structure was still relevant, having decided to only work on the two parts that are not acrylic. The hanging chain was given a custom carabiner in the shape of a heart, which is the element that connects the chair to the chain – it is, therefore, the first piece of hardware everyone notices. On the cushion, the brand’s signature heart yokes were appliquéd onto the seat. The partnership started with a meeting at Veikkola, where Aarnio has long lived and worked, and grew from there into a full collaboration.
The story behind the heart
The heart is VAIN’s most used shape, and its best-known piece came in November of 2022, when the label showed a 13-piece collection made from used McDonald’s staff uniforms and work aprons inside a McDonald’s restaurant in Helsinki. One of those pieces was a black kitchen worker’s shirt on which the golden arches had been cut and rearranged into a heart. The collection reached more than 200 million people worldwide, according to the brand, and made VAIN known well outside Finland.
A bit about Eero
Aarnio finished his studies at the Helsinki School of Applied Arts in 1957 and spent the following decade turning fibreglass and plastics into shapes furniture had not taken before, with the Ball Chair in 1963, Pastil in 1967 and Pony in 1973. His pieces are currently in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and he was given the Compasso d’Oro in 2008 and the Pro Finlandia Medal in 2010.
Project information
Furniture Design Company: VAIN, Eero Aarnio Originals
Original Designer: Eero Aarnio
Creative Director: Jimi Vain
Location: Finland
Date: 2026
