Design: Is Brad's furniture the Pitts?

Brad Pitt and two of his designs (AP)

So Brad Pitt is designing furniture now? Perhaps I should chuck in the writing and star in a Hollywood movie. After all, I am about as qualified to do that as the Fight Club actor is to work out the engineering calculations required to make a bed.

But physics is no bar to Brad. He has apparently been "doodling ideas" since the early 1990s, when he first came across the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The bed in question is, naturally, supersize, as Brad is always banging on about how normal beds aren't large enough for him, the missus and the children. Perhaps that accounts for the double-size marble bath, too. And the large white patent-leather armchair.

Pitt collaborated with Frank Pollaro, maker of "museum-quality" furniture with an art- deco feel. Pollaro said Pitt had thousands of doodles, which required design meetings that lasted for up to 10 hours. Although the range won't be launched until 11 November at pitt-pollaro.com, you can see it here: goo.gl/7vOzf.

So is it any good? I quite like the double-spiral side table, but the 24K gold finish is more Malibu than Mies van der Rohe. As for the rest of it, bearing in mind that only nine of the beds will be made, it seems to be more about Pitt seeing what crazy shapes he could create, rather than thinking about the crucial marriage between form and function all great furniture designers instinctively understand.

Perhaps he should stick to the day job. As one acerbic commentator wrote: "More evidence that design isn't easy. 12 Monkeys was good, though."

Kate Watson-Smyth blogs about interiors and design at: madaboutthehouse.com