Kelly Wearstler

Kelly Wearstler is a designer, creative director, and founder of the Los Angeles-based design firm Kelly Wearstler. Her work includes projects such as the San Francisco Proper Hotel and the Avalon Hotel in California, the Four Seasons Anguilla, as well as Beefbar at L'Apogée Courchevel in France, She has led residential, hotel, retail, and commercial projects worldwide while working with artists and craftspeople to honor history, location, and architecture, approaching each project as a multidisciplinary collaboration that emphasizes materiality, place, and storytelling. 00:00:00 Kelly Wearstler 00:00:28 Designing at Scale 00:01:18 Cal Neva: History and Reinvention 00:03:18 Collaboration Across Voices 00:04:19 Honoring History Without Repeating It 00:06:05 Designing New Worlds 00:07:02 Artists and Original Work 00:08:14 Again, Differently 00:10:00 A New Kind of Gallery 00:11:08 Maximalism and Minimalism 00:12:45 The Instinct to Collect 00:13:09 The Thrill of Discovery 00:14:04 First Dibs 00:15:06 Objects With Soul 00:16:27 Why She Won’t Reproduce the Past 00:16:54 AG1 00:17:53 Timelessness and History 00:18:41 Learning From Milton Glaser 00:21:21 Independence and Risk 00:22:41 Loss and Becoming 00:23:40 How Taste Evolves 00:26:56 Color as Emotion 00:28:09 A Home as Laboratory 00:29:59 Losing and Rebuilding 00:32:04 When Ideas Fail 00:33:20 Risk and Restraint 00:33:40 There Are No Rules 00:34:09 Designing for Real Life 00:34:15 LMNT 00:34:49 Inspiration From Film 00:35:11 Design Must Stay Flexible 00:35:50 Site-Specific Thinking 00:36:59 Revisiting Past Work 00:37:40 A Living Room Without a Sofa 00:39:54 Starting From Scratch 00:41:21 Flea Markets as Training 00:42:44 Entering Retail 00:44:11 Work, Family, Stamina 00:46:04 Bergdorf Goodman 00:50:00 Squarespace 00:51:50 Global Projects 00:55:06 Wearstler World 00:56:26 Favorite Hotels 00:57:10 The Sound of a Space 00:58:19 Small Changes, Big Impact 00:58:29 Shaping Space 01:00:07 Designing for Discovery 01:00:21 Sunken Spaces 01:01:30 The Austin Hotel 01:03:56 Respecting Scale 01:05:11 Her Clients 01:05:55 Spaces Come Alive 01:07:34 Why Dining Rooms Feel Empty 01:08:10 Breaking Repetition 01:08:54 Designing the View 01:10:25 Clients From Everywhere 01:10:48 Renderings vs Reality 01:11:21 Natural vs Technical 01:16:44 Everything Has Soul 01:17:00 The Most Beautiful Places 01:18:13 The Most Beautiful Homes 01:19:45 What Is Taste? 01:20:02 Dreams Come True 01:20:10 Early Hustle 01:21:40 tetragrammaton.com