November 26, 2023In some ways, Brigette Romanek is extremely down-to-earth. In her debut monograph, Livable Luxe (Chronicle Chroma), the Los Angeles–based designer writes, “For me, [living well] means living in a place where the most important thing is the ability to exhale, not to worry about items but enjoy them — not living in a precious way. No rooms are off limits.” She says she adores nothing more than a bargain buy and recounts how the plates hanging above the family-room fireplace in her own home were acquired from eBay and estate sales.
Her clientele, on the other hand, is anything but unassuming. Romanek has worked for Beyoncé and Demi Moore, decorated ballet dancer Misty Copeland’s Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan and collaborated with Gwyneth Paltrow on three different projects, including the Oscar winner and goop founder’s Montecito home, which graces the book’s cover. “The spaces Brigette designs are extraordinary,” Paltrow writes in the preface. “She has the most unique eye.”
Romanek describes her style as “elegant eclecticism with a dash of playfulness and something unexpected.” Her rooms combine a sharp stylishness with an inviting ease. The furniture is often bold, sculptural and refreshingly original, and her aesthetic has a definite European touch (she spent several years living in London). She also loves to throw in what she calls a “wild card.”
An example of a wild card in her own home is what seems to be a dramatically under-scale artwork mounted above the fireplace in the living room. “You would expect a really large piece there, and I’m like, ‘No.’ What belongs there is this really tiny, beautiful, pencil drawing — it allows you to really focus on it,” she tells Introspective.
In a Southern California home she decorated for repeat clients, Romanek clad the sitting room walls with a Gucci wallpaper sporting a lavish foliage motif, partly to distract attention from the space’s low ceiling height. “I wanted to create a vignette of something special so that’s what you focus on,” she explains.
She made similarly bold choices in another California home, whose living room would not look out of place in an Alpine ski resort. It includes three circular canvases from artist Mattia Biagi’s “Tar Work” series, a 1960s Samsas sofa by Swedish designer Carl Malmsten, a graphic pair of Roman and Williams armchairs and a poetic David Wiseman chandelier. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Romanek says of the space, “which for me is great. I like the idea of creating something unique. This room has all the things that I try to bring into a space — the new, the old, the soulful, the creative, the wild card.” That word again!
In the book, Romanek also gives readers design tips. For example: “Color affects us. Being intentional about the colors one chooses is important.” Yet so much great design is instinctive, and that is particularly true for the self-taught Romanek, who claims that her own ignorance has been bliss: Being unaware of decorating rules has given her immense creative freedom.
Where the book especially sings is in its wonderfully chatty, playful tone. Among the chapter headings are “Don’t Get Too Excited” and “Where My Girls At?” And many sentences sound as if Romanek were talking out loud. “I covered the . . . sofas in a celadon mohair. Ahhhh, so pretty,” she writes about decorating a 1920s Los Angeles home. There’s also an endearing touch of self-deprecation. “I’m no art critic, not an authority in any way. I simply know what I like and respond to. And honestly, that’s all you have to know.”
Ask her for her greatest aesthetic inspirations and she’ll mention Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, in New York, as well as fellow designers like Axel Vervoordt, Kelly Wearstler and the late Andrée Putman. She also loves the ceramists stocked by Lawson-Fenning in Los Angeles.
The notion of holding on to things is central to Romanek’s approach. An example is the string-shaped Tryst Three pendant by the Delhi-based lighting firm Paul Matter, which hangs above the Faye Toogood breakfast table in her own home. “I feel like it’s a classic,” she says. “I don’t see why I would ever want to change or get rid of it.”
Romanek slipped into interior design almost fortuitously. “I didn’t know [it] was a job,” she says. “It just didn’t occur to me.” She grew up on the South Side of Chicago with a single mother, the singer Paulette McWilliams, who provided back-up vocals for artists like Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin. At 17, Romanek settled in Los Angeles, where she initially considered becoming a lawyer. Instead, she ended up with her own recording contract after a producer overheard her singing in an elevator. Seven years later, she stumbled into her second career, as a handbag designer, after making some bags for friends as Christmas gifts. She soon received email requests for more and wound up being stocked at Barneys, Harvey Nichols and Lane Crawford.
Her entry into the world of interior design came in 2018, after she decorated an unprepossessing home for her family in Los Angeles. When she organized a handbag sale there, potential buyers were impressed by the decor. “Many people had known the house previously and thought there was no way that it could be turned into something great,” she recalls. Soon, she was asked to help out on other decorating jobs. The first was the Malibu home of Kelly Sawyer Patricof, cofounder of the nonprofit Baby2Baby. Romanek describes the design as “cozy, relaxing, gorgeous,” with a color palette dictated by the environment. “Malibu was definitely the star,” she says. “We just wanted to complement the surroundings.”
Romanek has since worked largely on residential projects, although the book also features notable commercial projects, including the Piaget store on Rodeo Drive and one of the seven boutiques she has outfitted for fashion brand The Great. Whatever the commission, she insists that it is important to have fun.
That applies to both the designer and the people who hire her. One of her longtime clients, the owner of the Southern California house with the Gucci wallpaper, says, “After three different houses, we are still best friends. That should say how I feel about the experience.” Romanek certainly seems content. When asked how she sees her future, she replies, “All I want is to keep doing what I’m doing. I just hope to continue creating. That’s really the sweet spot for me.”
