Julio Torres Turned Surrealist Comedy Into Designer Home Decor—and It’s Actually Furniture

Julio Torres has never been interested in good taste. Not in the conventional sense, anyway. The Salvadoran writer, comedian, and actor (known for HBO's "Los Espookys" and the Peabody Award-winning series "Fantasmas") believes that asking "Does this make me happy? Does this move me?" is far more useful than chasing whatever trend happens to be dictating the moment. That personal philosophy now has a physical form: a debut furniture collection called All Other Passports, made in collaboration with sustainable furniture brand Sabai. For anyone who follows celebrity furniture collections or tracks shifts in designer home decor, this one is worth paying close attention to.

From Comedy Specials to Collector-Worthy Objects

Torres is not new to thinking about objects. His HBO specials, "My Favorite Shapes" and "Color Theories," were, in his own words, Trojan horses for design critique. In "My Favorite Shapes," he assigned personalities to inanimate forms, like a delicate pearl for Timothée Chalamet, a dangly earring for Shakira. In "Color Theories," he dissected the emotional gap between lilac and purple with the precision of a color theorist. He grew up watching his mother, an architect, design clothes and furniture, and has carried that same instinct into his film and television sets.

The leap into commercial furniture, then, is less a departure and more a direct continuation. What changed is the audience. Instead of designing for a camera, Torres had to ask: can people actually sit on this?

What Is the 'All Other Passports' Collection?

All Other Passports was developed with Sabai, a Brooklyn-based, sustainability-focused brand that manufactures furniture in the United States using natural materials, including wood, organic hemp, and cotton. The collection debuted during New York City Design Week at the Collectible Design Fair, where it drew significant attention for its scenographic quality.

The line includes four key objects:

The Arrivals Screen is a folding metal room divider with a curtain-shaped wood carving embedded into it, a direct reference to sculptor Harry Roseman's installation at JFK's Terminal 4 customs hall. "Billowing curtains are evocative of so many things and it's so cinematic," Torres told Architectural Digest. There is also a keyhole on the back panel of the screen, and the matching key has been deliberately placed somewhere unknown. Torres describes it as "leaving things unresolved."

The Landing Daybed takes its form from the catenary curves of bridge suspension cables, translated into arched legs. Torres designed it with the belief that furniture should not feel too solid, too finished, or too final.

The Personal Items Side Table skips storage entirely and instead features a surface inlaid with a collage of everyday clutter; the kind of mess most people try to hide. It preempts the chaos rather than pretending it does not exist.

The Floor Cushions come in several colorways, each with a different metal charm attached: a coffee cup tilting toward a spill, a key, small objects that carry their own implied stories. These charms can be moved and affixed to other pieces in the collection.

Together, these pieces feel more like props in an imagined living situation than standard furniture. That is very much the point.

The Immigrant Story Behind the Design

The name All Other Passports reflects a shared experience between Torres and Sabai co-founder Phantila Phataraprasit. Torres immigrated from El Salvador; Phataraprasit from Thailand. Both came to New York and lived the particular experience of arriving with very little and slowly building a life that could eventually welcome others.

The collection is structured around that moment: when someone has just settled enough to start hosting, to offer a couch for a friend who has also just arrived. Torres describes it as "a passing of the torch." It is a deeply personal idea dressed in stainless steel and organic cotton.

The collaboration also pushed Sabai into new material territory. Phataraprasit, whose brand has focused primarily on soft, sustainable seating, introduced stainless steel for the first time, specifically for this project.

Where This Fits in the World of Celebrity Furniture Collections

Celebrity furniture collections have become a significant category in designer home decor. Drew Barrymore, Kelly Clarkson, Lenny Kravitz, Joanna Gaines, and others have all built brands or partnerships around their aesthetic sensibilities. The market for these collections continues to grow, and consumers are increasingly drawn to pieces that carry a recognizable creative point of view.

What separates the Torres x Sabai collection from the broader field is the absence of lifestyle branding in the traditional sense. There is no aspirational kitchen, no coastal grandmother aesthetic, no neutral palette designed to appeal to the widest possible range of rooms. Instead, All Other Passports leans fully into specificity: the corner of JFK where immigrants pass through customs, the curve of a bridge cable, the charm of a cup that is always about to spill.

For anyone building a home with designer decor that reflects something personal rather than generic, this approach offers a genuine alternative. The pieces are made to coexist with other objects, to "harmoniously integrate into somebody else's life," as Torres puts it, without demanding that the life reshape itself around them.

Why All Other Passports Reflect a Shift in Designer Home Decor

There is a growing appetite among design-conscious consumers for objects that carry meaning beyond function. The success of collections like this one signals that the line between collectible art and livable furniture is thinning. Pieces shown at design fairs like Collectible NYC are increasingly appearing in actual homes rather than on gallery walls, and collaborations between brands like Sabai and creative figures like Torres are driving that shift.

The All Other Passports collection is available through Sabai's website and reflects the brand's ongoing commitment to American manufacturing and sustainable materials. For those tracking where celebrity furniture collections and designer home decor are heading, this debut offers a clear answer: toward objects that think, feel, and occasionally hide their own keys.