Laguna Design Center

DESIGN DISPATCH

3 shows, 4 days, 501 ideas

Professional decorators and style mavens gather in Southern California for a week's worth of exhibitions, where they strut their stuff and sniff out what's best in showrooms.

A tale of excess, with plenty of chocolate

By Janet Eastman

Thursday, April 01, 2004

ORANGE COUNTY decorators and other style stewards who gathered at the Spring Market at the Laguna Design Center last week showed they could laugh at their reputation for excess. In fact, they howled when House & Garden design editor Mayer Rus, who writes a column called the Testy Tastemaker, poked fun at the South Coast's affliction with "house elephantiasis," where furniture-filled bathrooms are large enough to host neighborhood socials and "remote-controlled toilets have seats that flip up and say, 'Hel-looooo!' "

They quieted down, however, during Rus' spirited give-and-take with Newport Beach-raised, L.A.-based interior designer Michael S. Smith. The hundreds of decor pros searching for what's new were eager to hear how Smith makes life homey for his celebrity, CEO and society clients.

"Even formal rooms should be relaxed in California," announced the designer, a purple sweater tossed loosely over the shoulders of his charcoal suit. "The days when all the sconces matched is past," said Smith, who has created coordinated kitchen and bath fixtures -- from stark loft chrome to cozy country brushed nickel -- for Kallista.

Eccentric combos make rooms inspiring because they reflect owners' varied interests, said Smith. For unpretentious luxury, he mixes fine antiques found on European treasure hunts or on www.1stdibs.com with "paisley hippie" bedspreads from Urban Outfitters that he cuts up and drapes on windows.

Most of the 40 showrooms' textiles focused on traditionals such as Nancy Corzine's European fabrics in the newly expanded Blake House.

New York-based designer Thomas O'Brien said he found inspiration everywhere for his vintage-modern Groundworks fabrics at Lee Jofa. A leaf motif from an old Indian sari was updated on chenille, and he studied oval labels on 1960s spice jars and reproduced their shape in cayenne red on a straw-colored cotton woven in France.

The local love of patio entertaining brought attention to new outdoor-furniture resources. Inside the Century Designer showroom, Richard Frinier, who designs in his Belmont Heights studio in Long Beach, was showing his cushy Andalusia chaise longue with a canopy. His line for Century's new Leisure Division is made from teak and sand-cast aluminum and wrapped in a canvas-looking acrylic to withstand sun, rain and overzealous pool-party guests.

Throughout the day, the talk centered on luxurious, decadent chocolate. The color, that is. Convinced that deep brown goes with everything, decorators approved its pairing with mineral-blue bubbles on Robert Allen's upholstered pieces in Lee Lawrence Ltd. It was also seen in Adriana Hoyos' dark cocoa bench with a raw silk cushion in the Island Bay Trading Co. and Belgian faux fur throws at the Austin Horn Collection.

"Match it with dramatic pink," says Cherie Hemphill of Kravet/Lee Jofa, as she touched a swatch of soft chocolate mohair.

Mohair? Nothing says tradition more than that.