There’s something deliciously absurd about lighting your living room with a seatbelt. Or lounging on a suede sofa outfitted with actual Mercedes headlights—high beams, turn signals, and all. But if you know MSCHF, the Brooklyn-based art collective behind viral stunts like the Big Red Boots and the Jesus Shoes, you already know: sense is the first thing to go.
This May, as part of NYCxDesign, MSCHF and Mercedes-AMG lift the veil on a new collaboration titled “Not for Automotive Use”, a concept furniture collection that smashes the gas pedal on the postmodern tradition of radical design—and doesn’t bother checking the mirrors. Think: Achille Castiglioni meets Fast & Furious.
It’s not just design. It’s performance art you can sit on.
AMG x MSCHF Concept Collection / Überraschend und unkoventionell: Mercedes-AMG und das amerikanische Künstlerkollektiv MSCHF kreieren extravagante Möbel-Kreationen / Exklusive Ausstellung in MSCHF Studio in New York im Rahmen des NYCxDesign Festivals 2025
AMG x MSCHF Concept Collection / Surprising and unconventional: Mercedes-AMG and the American artist collective MSCHF create extravagant furniture creations / Exclusive exhibition at MSCHF Studio in New York as part of the NYCxDesign Festival 2025
FROM TRACK TO LIVING ROOM
The pieces—each a one-off symphony of AMG engineering and high-concept subversion—repurpose original performance parts from AMG vehicles into functional art for the home. The result? A defiant act of appropriation that pays tribute to the Italian Radical Design movement of the ’60s while steering straight into the cultural slipstream of 2025.
In the same lineage as Castiglioni’s tractor-seat stools or Gaetano Pesce’s polyurethane blobs, MSCHF’s creations laugh in the face of good taste—and land somewhere better. They’re highly collectible, mechanically absurd, and painfully cool. They’re also, technically, furniture.
The Seatbelt Shelf is a precise, industrial ballet: milled aluminum meets five doubled-up sets of red and yellow AMG seatbelts, each one taut, tensioned, and ridiculously overbuilt—like shelving made for Formula 1 pit crews. The Seatbelt Light transforms ambient illumination into an act of physical engagement: click the buckle and the LEDs flicker on; unclip it and it springs back to neutral.
The Headrest Chair, with its tubular steel roll-cage silhouette and triple-AMG-cushion configuration, makes a credible argument for ergonomic absurdity. It’s not just a chair. It’s a recalibration of status. A throne for those who collect lap times and limited runs.
FUNCTIONAL FICTION
What unites the collection is a sly visual language: symbols of speed made slow. Components meant to reduce drag are now bolted into stillness. The Grille Grill, a charcoal BBQ in the unmistakable shape of the AMG front end, feels almost sacrilegious—but in the way that makes collectors salivate.
Meanwhile, the Headlight Couch, a velvety MICROCUT suede conversation piece, doesn’t just resemble a car. It is part car. With its angular chassis and working light signals, it’s part 1970s Italian cinema, part Stuttgart showroom. You could stage an entire dinner party around it—and still feel like you’re racing down the Autobahn.
The Wheel Fan, framed in an Interlagos rim and sitting atop anodized aluminum, keeps things cool while spinning like it’s trying to beat wind resistance records in your living room.
THE STUDIO UNVEILED
The pieces were forged at MSCHF’s previously top-secret Greenpoint studio—now opened to select guests for a three-day vernissage. Walking into the studio feels less like entering a design showroom and more like stepping into the control center of a design cult that read too much Domus and then rewired a German luxury car in protest.
Studio equipment is left in situ as part of the installation—MSCHF makes sure you know: this is where the work happens. It’s raw, reverent, and a touch ridiculous. Which is the point.
MORE THAN MERCH
To complement the furniture drop, an exclusive capsule of apparel and accessories adds a layer of ironic luxury. Graphical prints of AMG parts adorn heavyweight tees, workwear trousers, and caps that feel like a pit crew from another dimension. Even the accessories are layered with subtext: a tree-shaped car fragrance, for instance, nods to Affalterbach, Germany—AMG’s hometown, whose name translates to “apple tree on the brook.”
The apparel doesn’t scream “collab.” It murmurs it, like a well-tuned V8 at idle.
DESIGN FOR THE DEFIANT
MSCHF and AMG didn’t just build a collection—they built a contradiction. It’s both a reverent nod to design history and a burn-out across its face. It’s high-performance machinery frozen into domesticity. It’s industrial poetry for those who want their living room to say: Yes, this is a seat made of seatbelts—and no, you can’t have one.
This collection isn’t for your average Mercedes owner. It’s for the collector who knows their Memphis from their Milan, who wants their home to speak in limited editions and punchlines.
And above all, it’s for those who understand that in 2025, the true mark of luxury isn’t horsepower—it’s how you repurpose it.
MSCHF x AMG: “Not for Automotive Use” premieres May 15–17 at MSCHF Studio, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Available by custom order only. Visit www.mschf.com for more details.
