An encounter with Kelly Wearstler can’t help but conjure up the beauty and cool reserve of one of Hitchcock’s leading ladies. But sit in one of the rooms she’s designed or leaf through one of her coffee table books, and a different character emerges—Alice, in a shiny, slick and hip Wonderland of her own making. That makes sense when you think about what her range of work can cover, from sublime residences to memorable rooms in fantasy-indulging hotels such as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, the Viceroy hotels in Miami, Los Angeles and Anguilla, and the Avalon in Beverly Hills.
For someone whose work is so in, she doesn’t like to make pronouncements on what’s out. But she will weigh in on one thing: She does not like recliners. Her reason? What they represent: sitting around. Something Wearstler, principal in her own 25-employee design firm, doesn’t have the time or temperament for.
For someone whose work is so in, Wearstler doesn’t like to make pronouncements on what’s out.
Call her Los Angeles office on any given day and her assistant, a pleasant air traffic controller, will tell you there are three people and two phone calls ahead of you. No wonder—this year alone she’s designing eight hotels around the world and has launched a fabric line, a rug collection and a wall coverings line. And stand by: Tabletop and bedding are coming soon to a store near you. Basically, you can live, eat, and sleep Kelly Wearstler. “In college I started out as a graphic design major, but I figured out pretty quick that I was too energetic to sit in front of a computer all day,” says Wearstler in her little girl’s voice with a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, drawl.
Her energy informs her style—mostly modern, always colorful. In the ’90s, as the decorating world swerved from Reagan-era opulence to Jetsons-looking sleek, Wearstler started getting attention for decorating houses in a style she says is best described as unexpected. Picture a room that both Cary Grant and Andy Warhol had a say in—old Hollywood martinis-by-the-pool glam meets 1960s-ish mod, mixed with bold color.
Stacey Snider, co-chair and CEO of Dreamworks Pictures, says she told Wearstler to make her home seem lived in. “I wanted the house to look like I had inherited it from an eccentric Palm Beach grandma. And everything she selected was perfect.”
Residential clients, living in a space every day, can be risk-averse, Wearstler says, but that’s the fun of client collaboration—catering to someone’s lifestyle while also giving them a better way of living. Fearlessly trying something new is what she likes about her commercial projects. Take a peek at the Viceroy Resort in Santa Monica, one in a series of swank hotels decorated by Wearstler. In the hotel library, stuffy club chairs get a citrus kick in front of black bookshelves running at 45-degree angles.
Like a lot of talented people, she can be her toughest critic. She says every client has to love what you’ve created when the project ends—that’s the only way to succeed. The greatest compliment ever paid her work? “My sons told me they loved the bedrooms I designed for them.”
She loves to look at modern art, takes major shopping trips at least six times a year—walking world capitals all day for three, four, five days in a row, constantly sketching, taking notes, snapping pictures—and also attends furniture auctions and modernism shows.
“I almost can’t remember when I didn’t notice design,” she says, crediting her mother—an antiques dealer who she describes as a closeted interior designer—with exposing her to various textures, colors, and beautiful objects. “Everything in our house was country. When I was around 12 or 13, my mother would let me pick out stuff for my room. I remember mine was always modern. She hated it, but it’s what I wanted.”
After studying interior design in college in Boston, where she waited tables to put herself through school, Wearstler moved to New York City for postgraduate work. She held down two design internships before striking out for a set-design career in Los Angeles, where she found herself instead drawn to real-life rooms—to the layout and ornamentation of ordinary human living.
“I’ve had interns in my office who are incredibly smart, but have no savvy at putting rooms together. You can get better, but I think you’re really born with it,” she says. Wearstler will tell you that if creating beautiful rooms were easy, everybody would do it. Still, even she has had her what-was-I-thinking moments. “My own houses are like little laboratories. I try something, I take a risk and it usually works. Except for the black breakfast room in my last house. It was too heavy,” she laughs. Taupe paint replaced the black when the house went on the market.
Selling the family abode is a regular activity—so often that Wearstler, 37, can best be described as a re-nester, not a nester. She and husband Brad Korzen, a hotelier whose company owns the Viceroy Hotels, have lived in six houses in the last ten years, each one completely different from the last. “Once I do something, I’m done with it,” she says of her changing styles.Wearstler describes their latest renovation, a 1920’s manse in Beverly Hills, as her dream house, and this dream’s been under construction for the last 20 months—a fact that doesn’t seem to faze her. She says she’s really enjoyed returning the house to its early Hollywood roots, adding that this time the look will be pared-down and modern, a departure from her last home.
This summer, as she settles her husband and the two boys she calls her “little monkeys” into their home, she’ll also be moving her staff into a new office space. Where, in all this professional and personal commotion, does this woman find peace? “When I sleep,” she says.
“I had a major meltdown the other day. I was in my car and felt like I was just doing too much,” she says, confessing that she needed a few minutes to herself, and went to get her nails done. “And I realized: My family’s healthy, I’m healthy—that’s all that matters.” Looks like Alice has learned her way around Wonderland.
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