SANDRA ESPINET   THE TALENT:  by Kimberly Stevens

The scene outside the L’Hermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills was bustling. Valets darted and key jingled as the hotel’s manager and bell men stood tall, waiting in attendance for one of their favorite guests to come down for her warmed-up and waiting car.
Sporting a neat black dress, Chanel slides, and a sleek French upsweep, Sandra Espinet laughed and joked with the staff whose names she knows by heart.
“This hotel is like my second home. I always stay here when I come to Los Angeles – they even keep a set of my luggage filled with my wardrobe so I never have to pack – and we always stay in my favorite room.”

Sandy, as friends and colleagues affectionately call her, is considered the design go-to girl and tastemaker extraordinaire in and around Cabos San Lucas, Mexico.  The balmy Baja getaway, just a few hours by plane from Los Angeles, has long cast its Spring Break wet T-shirt contest image aside, as new restaurants and clubs, elite hotels, and grand vacation homes infiltrate the region. Now considered part Hollywood playground and part LA socialite party scene, Cabos sports an ever expanding clientele purchasing and furnishing homes. In turn, it has sparked a burgeoning business at her design firm Square One Interiors, as well as her gallery, Square One Fine Art, and at her Square One Showroom where she sells furniture and home accessories. Both glamorous and social, Espinet’s extensive projects, travel schedule, and multiple businesses keep the pace moving at a fast clip.

Moments later, a sleek Porsche sports car zips up, and a valet leaps out and gives Espinet a nod. She softly giggles, “This is definitely ‘a husband car’ – he’s the one who chose it.”  She jumps in like the perfect lady, waits a moment – and with a grin, revs up the engine and speeds down the palm tree-lined street toward the design district. With her agenda being a much anticipated tour of a handful of her favorite stores, the racer Porsche somehow seems the perfect complement.

And avid supporter of the design district, Espinet explains that it is the proximity to a large city filled with amazing shops that makes her job manageable. It is the ultimate challenge: creating a space in Cabos – the off-the-beaten-path beach locale that doesn’t have the high-end design resources that cities like Los Angeles and New York have, but does sport a clientele that has come to expect big city caliber. “My clients are sophisticated and they understand subtlety and attention to detail,” she says.  The majority of her shopping, sourcing, and client meetings happen in Los Angeles and then the logistics of shipping and border issues become an even larger part of the process.  She admits that while it’s a nice short jet ride from Cabos to Los Angeles, it could be even nicer.  “I’m going to get my pilot’s license,” she quips while expertly driving the muscled Porsche. “Then I’ll never be at the mercy of airline schedules…and my efficiency and pleasure factor will elevate too.”

This particular weekend is going to be a whirlwind. Friends have invited her and her husband to the Prime Time Emmy’s and there are meetings scheduled for her upcoming HGTV show and prep for the taping of a Christmas Special where she will decorate  the home of Holly Robynson Peete for the holidays.  And of course the high season in Cabos is about to heat up.

“Your winter here (in LA) is the Mexican high season, and everyone descends,” Espinet says. “We spend a lot time with clients, getting their homes ready for family and friends – and for the endless stream of parties and social functions. My clients want their homes to be nothing short of stunning and set for entertaining – and they always want something unique.”

Stunning and unique are what Espinet does best; it’s part of her design ethos which includes an adventurous, fearless spirit, and a passion for her work that embodies her style. She is known for mixing high-end clean contemporary pieces with authentic Mexican and South American antiques and handcrafted items from the local region. “I like to put together pieces in unexpected ways that compliment the region and the lifestyle.”

Her talent for mixing local art and antiques may have come from the travel she did as a child. Her father was in the oil business and they moved consistently, exposing her to all different parts of the world. Design was a skill and a craft that she knew early on she wanted to follow as she opened her own design firm (Reef Designs) shortly after graduating college in Florida.  After a few years, she sold the business and moved to Los Angeles where she earned a Master’s Degree in Production Design at the American Film Institute. Learning quickly that the Hollywood scene wasn’t for her, she asked her agent to help her find a full time design job.

Cabos was the last place she expected to get an offer, but she decided to take it on a whim – a change of pacing from hectic Los Angeles. She took over the majority of the design work in a small firm that closed its doors not long after her arrival, but what she already gained was invaluable: compacted experience and a strong client base. “Taking the job in Cabos was life changing. I started a design firm which led to opening an art gallery which led to opening a showroom.”  It is also where she met her husband, golf club and resorts executive Al Kairis. And like her work, her personal causes are intensely important to her – she travels regularly to Cambodia where she has committed her personal time and constant effort in raising money and awareness for the Cambodian Children’s Fund. On a visit to Nepal, she adopted and became permanent guardian to a baby elephant aptly named, “Sandra Kali” meaning, Princess Sandra. “I decided not to have children so I could put my energy and attention into other things,” she says. “The children at the orphanage and the little elephant have become my babies.”

Espinet is going on a decade living in Cabos – time to gather a close circle of sources in Los Angeles that she says have become like a family. The afternoon speeds along with visits to a handful of her favorite shops. “I know these shops inside and out,” she says with pleasant confidence. Last stop before returning to the hotel to dress for the Emmy’s is Dos Gallos where Espinet chats warmly with Gail and Charles Boswell about their Guatemalan textile and pottery, Spanish Colonial style tables, Cofradia (which are old holy tables), clients and one of the couple’s assistants who is soon to have her first child.  Espinet purchases a table for a client and takes mental notes of a pair of giant doors salvaged from a cathedral.
A quick glance at her watch and Espinet is soon behind at the wheel of the Porsche and back at the hotel in no time flat. Tossing the car keys to the valet, she spots her husband with whom she walks to her “favorite room” in their home away from home, but not before saying goodbye, adding, “I love Los Angeles – its people and the pace, but no matter the excitement, I always have Cabos on my mind.  Cabos is what makes me an interesting person.”