Just back from Los Angeles from the Legends: Where Muses Dwell interior design event in the La Cienega Design Quarter. It was fabulous and inspirational! Here are my top 7 picks of window displays out of 61 windows, each featuring a different Muse along with the presenting designer's statements...
Revez Grand!
WINDOW'S MUSE: RENEE PERLE as photographed by Jacques-Henri Lartique
"Two young moderns on what turned into a 3-year French Riviera vacation. Thinking stripes, fringe, pincurls and how these two would choose to live today?"
- Presenting designer, Windsor Smith
Renee Perle as photographed by Jacques-Henri Lartique in the French Riviera, 1930
Corner window featuring Muse, Renee Perle
'I don't collect, I accumulate.' -Yves Saint Laurent
WINDOW'S MUSE: YVES SAINT LAURENT
"It's not just the decoration of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge homes that inspire me but their sensibility and taste is, truly, my muse."
- Presenting designer, Matt O'Dorisio
Detail from window featuring Muse, Yves Saint Laurent
'When you get there, there is no there, there.'
- Gertrude Stein
WINDOW'S MUSE: GERTRUDE STEIN
"Gertrude Stein was an ex-patriot living in Paris during the Belle Epoque. She became a central figure in the modern literacy and artistic movements, nurturing and supporting creative work. I've always romanticized this period and her pivotal role in its legacy."
- Presenting designer, Cliff Fong
'Le Style Pauline'
WINDOW'S MUSE: PAULINE DE ROTHSCHILD
"Iconoclastic, idiosyncratic, individualistic..."le style Pauline" is the American-born aesthete's legacy of juxtaposing spare/opulent, modern/historic, raw/refined, mixed with memories, emotion, and scholarship to embody inspired design, timeless style."
- Presenting designer, Kristi Nelson
Old Havana Style
WINDOW'S MUSE: OLD HAVANA
"The Muse chosen for the window vignette is Old Havana. It is based upon historical references from the heydays of the 1920's and 1930's when the fusion of the Spanish Colonial and Art Deco furnishings and architecture became the new modern style du jour. Bright colonial colors amid darkly hued wooden furniture creates a distinctly Havana experience."
- Presenting designer, Thomas Allardyce
Odalisque En Repose
WINDOW'S MUSE: ODALISQUE EN REPOSE
"I have always wondered about the beautiful woman in La Grande Odalisque by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres. The luxury of her small den with its bed hangings and cloths inspired within me a lifelong love of textiles, fantasy and exoticism."
- Presenting designer, Young Huh
Grande Odalisque, oil painting of 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
'Pleasure was the color of the time'
WINDOW'S MUSE: JULIA MORGAN
"She designed buildings to fit her clients, blending design strategy with structural articulation in a way the was expressive and contextual, leaving us a legacy of treasures that were as revered when she created them as they are cherished today." -Michael Graves
- Presenting designer, Elizabeth Dinkel
'My buildings will be my legacy...they will speak for me long after I'm gone' - Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan with William Randolph Hearst looking over drawings, 1926
Who is your Muse and where does your Muse dwell? Consider WHO, WHAT, WHEN OR WHERE inspires you the most.
Warmly yours, Tonia