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Top Interior Designers: Meet Kelly Wearstler’s Vibrant Design World ⇒ Are you a design lover? What do you know about interior design in the USA? Well, CovetED wants to share with you some of Kelly Wearstler’s best accomplishments. Wearstler is an American designer who pays great attention to detail and uses colour in quite the adventurous manner. She also provides textured and multiculturally referenced designs. In her work, she often combines objects from different styles and eras, resulting in extraordinarily versatile projects. She once received the tile of “the presiding grande dame of West Coast interior design” by The New Yorker. Now, CovetED will talk a little bit about her background as well as some of her most iconic interior design projects, so take a look.
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Wearstler launched her own self-entitled fashion line in spring 2011. Her first fall collection took four years to complete. Booth Moore from Los Angeles Times described her work as “totally wearable” for its handmade appearance. In winter 2011 her line was sold to Bergdorf Goodman which featured retailed clutches and jewellery. Wearstler’s spring 2012 line featured clashing patterns and a modern glam look. Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Holt Renfrew and Net-a-Porter are some of the groups that still sell her clothing line.
It was in 1995 that Wearstler finally opened her design firm, Kelly Wearstler Interior Design. A few years later, she decorated the house of real estate developer Brad Korzen to whom she eventually married in 2002. As a result, she provided multiple designs for properties owned by Kor Realty Group. She also remodelled the interiors of Avalon, a hotel in Beverly Hills. She continued designing interiors for boutiques, hotels and resorts. Her work was styled by The New York Times as “retro-theatrical”.
It was due to her work in hotels that she became known as a west coast designer. She also designed Bergdorf Goodman’s BG restaurant and lounge in Manhattan. In 2006, the publishing company HarperCollins distributed Wearstler’s photography book, Dominicilum Docoratus which featured photographs of herself dressed in evening gowns and pictures of her mansion in Beverly Hills. She has already published three books entitled Rhapsody, Hue and Modern Glamour. She went on to be a judge for two seasons in Bravo’s reality show Top Design. She then introduced a line of decorative home goods for New York-based department store Bergdorf Goodman. Her firm also designs exclusive bed sheets for SFERRA, rugs for the Rug Company, fine china for Pickard China, and wall coverings for F. Schumacher & Co.
Residential:
Manhattan Apartment
Evergreen residence
Spring Street residence
Tribeca Loft
Viceroy Miami
Bergdorf Goodman Restaurant
The 10,000 sq. ft. Bellagio Residence was a 1939 Georgian Revival overlooking the manicured links of the Bel Air Country Club that was in need of a modern touch. Stripped down to the studs, Wearstler worked to create an additional 3,000 sq. ft. of living space, pushed up the ceiling heights, broadened windows and doors to allow more light and completely carved out a new master suite upstairs.
The 40-acre Viceroy Anguilla marks the first international location for the brand and Kelly Wearstler’s most consistent interpretation of Viceroy style to date. The expansive property provides a serene setting for its guests and shows the designer’s signature mix of organic elements.
Wearstler main goal was to make the ocean the clear focus of the house. In the living room, floor-to-ceiling windows frame the spectacular Pacific. At the centre of the house, an enormous skylight was installed and sunlight enlightens from above. Soaring two stories high, one leafy tree was planted in the main hall. The colour palette, muted and complex was drawn from the oceanfront setting: silvery barnacle grey, spindrift white and driftwood taupe. All of the building materials – bleached walnut flooring, Douglas-fir kitchen cabinetry, and wave-patterned marble walls – emulate this natural setting.
Wearstler compares marble to something organic and full of movement that makes you feel like you’re inside a shell. A range of marble—from watery green to brooding storm-cloud black—was used throughout the house as wall coverings, custom vanities and dramatic fireplace surround. There are tiny, spiralling, fossilized shells embedded within the marble kitchen counter, and an enormous sculpture of a chambered nautilus in the foyer seems to tumble to the floor evoking a Jules Verne vision where the known world spins into the imaginary (a Wearstler trademark).
See Also:
DIVE IN KELLY WEARSTLER’S LATEST COLOURFUL PROJECT
KELLY WEARSTLER – GRANDE DAME OF WEST COAST INTERIOR DESIGN
Wearstler’s designs attract and inspire an enviable roster of A-listers from the film and music industries, as well as top celebrities, and tastemakers worldwide. Her extravagant and vibrant interiors imbue luxury hotels and grand residences from Beverly Hills to the Caribbean and around the globe. Among Wearstler’s expansive and diverse lifestyle portfolio are collaborations with some of the most respected global brands across the luxury market space. Wearstler’s lifestyle brand boasts its own bespoke furniture collection as well as a favoured and long-standing presence on vintage and antique online retailer 1stdibs.
As an interior designer, Wearstler finds influence in Modernism and old Hollywood glamour as created by Dorothy Draper and William Haines, and the work of architect Aldo Rossi. Her style has been described as “Hollywood Regency” and “Maximalism”. She is credited, alongside Jonathan Adler and Miles Redd as bringing “the florid and the decorative back to interior design”, mixing modern and historical designs, such as a Rococo mirror, against a turquoise painted wall, accented by a shag rug. Wearstler visits auction houses to collect furniture and decor items for projects. In 2008 she was deemed a “mega decorator” by Domino, being described as reaching out to “the hip design public”. She believes that clutter is the biggest faux pas in home decor.
Her biggest advice to aspiring interior designers would be to travelling. You have to see and study other cultures. If you have an opportunity in school to study abroad or to do any type of travelling, you should take advantage of every moment you can. And if you can’t or don’t have the means to travel, then explore another local or nearby places that you’ve never seen. Being an interior designer is all about discovery and adventure.
She won multiple outstanding accolades including Vogue’s Best Dressed list, Architectural Digest’s preeminent Top 100 Architecture & Interior Design list, French AD’s World’s Top Interior Designers, and TIME Style & Design’s elite “Design 100” group of global creatives. Wearstler has penned monthly style advice columns for InStyle, The Huffington Post, The Coveteur and Domaine. Her work and profiles have been featured in Vogue, Elle Décor, Architectural Digest, InStyle, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Condé Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times. International press includes the French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Indian editions of Architectural Digest, Elle Decoration UK, Wallpaper, Vogue Paris, Vogue China, Residence, Belle, Vogue Living, House & Garden and Hong Kong Tatler.
♣ “I love history… everything is inspired by history, so that’s why I love vintage and antiques.”
♣ “My motto in life is ‘Take risks;’ you don’t have a voice if you don’t. You have to venture outside your boundaries. That’s what life’s all about.”
♣ “I look at every piece of furniture and every object as an individual sculpture.” “Having an eye is one thing, but you have to be able to execute.”
♣ “Whether you’re going to a museum or a flea market or flipping through a book, always be on the lookout for something special.”
♣ “I experience my interiors as sculpture. I play with texture, scale and dimension to create a sense of drama. I want to tell a story.”
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