KELLY WEARSTLER
By Susanna Salk for 1st dibs

Despite running a juggernaut design firm with international influence and clientele, creating decorative home accessories for her boutique at Bergdorf Goodman, launching a carpet line for The Rug Company, a signature collection of fabrics and trimmings with Groundworks at Lee Jofa, and returning as a judge to Bravo’s top-rated “Top Design” series, Kelly Wearstler is much more interested in asking the ages of your children and waxing poetic about her two young boys than flexing her design muscles by way of introduction.

As intimate as she is influential, serene as she is sensational, Wearstler’s intriguing interiors aptly reflect her unique sense of self and how she views the world.  Currently helping shape Viceroy Hotels in Miami and Anguilla (both set to open next year) along with future hotel projects in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Vietnam, while simultaneously revamping a 1926 Georgian-style estate in Beverly Hills for herself and her family, Wearstler is undaunted by the pressure to outdo herself.  Yet, she continually raises the bar on her now iconic design sensibility to keep people – and most of all herself – feeling surprised.  “I want to be challenged by working with different types of clients, materials, and locations around the world,” explains Wearstler. “If you constantly dabble in the same style, then you don’t grow as a designer.”

Wearstler was raised in South Carolina and ultimately migrated to Los Angeles after receiving a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and interning in New York for Milton Glaser. “I’d be so much less confident today if it weren’t for those years immersed in learning from such great people,” says Wearstler. She has designed offices, restaurants, retail environments, and residences but her first project was her own apartment in Hancock Park in Los Angeles. It was her lab to explore her constant quest for unexpected style.

 KWID (Kelly Wearstler Interior Design) was launched in 1995 on her dialectic, and rooms haven’t been the same since. “If it’s everywhere and it’s tired, it’s not for me,” explains Wearstler of her fascination with combining the unusual with the everyday so that it delights the eye as easily as it shelters the soul. “Even when it was just me working eighteen hour days, I would never just settle for regurgitated trends,” says Wearstler who now employs over 23 people in her firm where projects ebb and flow equally between the commercial and residential. “Life is serious: you need to have some unexpected wonder around to keep it interesting,” she tells us.

Over the past ten years, the Wearstler look could be admired not just through her books Modern Glamour and Domicilium Decoratus, but via her California boutique hotel renovations: the Avalon, Maison 140, and the Viceroy Hotels in Santa Monica and Palm Springs. “A hotel isn’t a time capsule,” she says, “ I always try for a contemporary interpretation of its roots.”  Her newest completion is the Tides in South Beach, where Art Deco architecture has been infused with sensuous sophistication. “I wanted to juxtapose 21st century luxury with the city’s historic spirit,” says Wearstler who brought a 1920’s gold leaf wall hanging from Europe to the lobby as well as vintage brass palm trees to the dining room. Wearstler understands that excitement is best brought to fruition via adventure in scale, texture, and color that both challenges and comforts. She reveals, “I am always seeking out eye-catching materials and experimenting with unorthodox applications.”

With so many projects in the works, the constant crosscurrents between her worlds allow a seamless flow of new ideas and products back into each. “I’ll see a one-of-a kind piece in a Vietnam and then turn it into an object people can buy at Bergdorf Goodman,” says Wearstler. “Or I’ll design a chair for a client’s home and turn it into a form I might try at a resort.” 

While she’s a judge to her designer hopefuls on “Top Design,” it is they who continually inspire her: “I am so impressed by how creative they can be, even on the smallest of budgets.” When she’s not taping or traveling, (“I always carry a sketchbook with me,”) or working on her client projects and collections, Wearstler is putting the finishing touches on her own home, a massive renovation that promises to take her now signature aesthetic in a fresh direction. “It’s taken me a long time because I want to have all the right pieces,” says Wearstler. “And because I want this house to feel different than anything I’ve ever done.” In true Weartsler fashion, the door is always open to share the unexpected surprises that wait inside for everyone; in fact, each room is being documented to be published in a book out next year.  And how does husband and hotelier Brad Korzen feel about the new digs? Replies Wearstler with a smile: “He just wants to be sure there are enough comfortable chairs to sit on.”

FASHION
For me, it’s all about bejeweled accoutrements, vintage, structured clothing, and a sick pair of stockings. 

FABRICS
Aside from my new collection of fabrics and trimmings from Lee Jofa [launching Fall 2008], right now, I think Pierre Frey rocks.  It’s colors and textures are so rich.

ENTERTAINING
I love to make dark chocolate blueberry turtles with organic blueberries with my two sons to serve to guests for dessert.

COLOR
I’m attracted to a kaleidoscope of colors.

TRAVEL
I’m traveling to India next month to gather inspiration for my projects and upcoming product collections:  bedding, table linens, and my collection of decorative home accessories at Bergdorf Goodman.

GARDENING or FLORAL
Peonies are my all-time favorite flowers.  So chic and timeless.

ART or DESIGN  
My favorites include Ettore Sottsass, Pedro Friedeberg, Franz Klein, Victor Vasarely and Cannon/Bullock wallcoverings, and The Rug Company.
 
BOOK  (ITALICS OLGA—WITH NO UNDERLINE)
Pictures, Tim Walker
Regency Redux, Emily Eerdmans (Kelly wrote the Foreward)
Goodbye Picasso, Grosset & Dunlap
The Hermes Shop Window, Leila Menchari
Horst Interiors, Barbara Plumb
Ettore Sottass - A Critical Biography, Barbara Radice

MUSEUM
Natural History Museum, NYC
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
The Tate, London

RESTAURANT
Waverly Inn, NYC
Chez Pannise, Berkeley, CA


HOTEL
Hotel Santa Caterina, Amalfi Coast, Italy
Hotel de Crillon, Paris

MUSIC CD
Carlos Antonio Jobim
The Cure
Red Hot Chili Peppers

GIFT
Kelly Wearstler decorative home accessories at Bergdorf Goodman
Pratesi 5 x 7 cashmere throw
Lena Wald jewelry

SHOPPE
Bergdorf Goodman, NYC
Satine, Los Angeles
Vintage:
Relik, London
The Way We Wore, Los Angeles
Catwalk, Los Angeles