Retail Therapy: L.A.'s Voila!

I first became acquainted with Los Angeles shop Voila! when I visited their booth at the last SF20 show. It was filled with gorgeously repurposed vintage industrial furnishings and darkly glamorous objets, and it was pretty much love at first sight.

I was excited to visit the Voila! showroom on North La Brea during our last trip to Southern California, but alas, it was closed the day we stopped by.

These new photos of the shop, shot by Sam Frost for a recent feature on 1stdibs, make me more determined than ever to get there.

I'm absolutely mesmerized by store owner Katrien Van der Schueren's inspired mix of dark, weird, and wonderful Belgian antiques and curiosities. And though I'm positive that everything here is way out of my price range, I could definitely kill an hour or two furtively fondling it all -- not to mention taking inspiration for future eBay scouting missions.

Read the 1stdibs article on Voila! here -- and browse the shop's online offerings here.

House Voyeur: Rustic and Retro in Silverlake

Sheharazad Pezeshkpour and Ron Fleming's Silverlake home is, to me, the quintessential arty Los Angeles abode: set into a leafy hillside and filled with quirky vintage treasures.

I love how the couple has fused rustic, retro, and modern elements. This is no cookie-cutter midcentury modern showhouse, outfitted with the requisite iconic pieces but somehow lacking soul. Rather, it's a warm, inviting space that feels very personal and reflective of its owners' personalities. I'd love to come to a party here, sipping glass after glass of red wine out on the patio and having heady conversations late into the balmy L.A. night.

Here, Sheharazad gives us a virtual tour of the designing duo's (she works for a business-design firm called Studio Deluxe, while Ron co-owns YYES) 1,980-square-foot urban oasis:

"Built in 1952, our home is a California rancher with midcentury, clean-lined touches.

Our style is eclectic and considered. We like to mix pieces from different decades and have an appreciation for objects that showcase excellence in design and craftsmanship. We’ve designed the house as a whole to have a relaxed, atmospheric vibe. And within that, each room in our home is designed to have a purpose.

We’re inspired by so many designers: Tony Duquette, David Hicks, Kelly Wearstler, Jonathan Adler, Ralph Lauren, John Lautner, Edward Durrell Stone, LaGardo Tackett, Yves St. Laurent … all have such an incredible sense of style. We also find inspiration through reading old issues of Sunset magazine and Architectural Digest from the ’60s, ’70s, and even the ’80s. You really get to see a variety of design solutions that worked in the past — and, of course, some that should stay in the past. But the most inspiring ones are always the things that were so ahead of their time that they still look futuristic, even now when they’re considered vintage.

A couple of our favorite things about this house are the exposed beams and high ceilings in the main room, which adds a lot of depth to the space, making it feel larger than it is.

We tend to gravitate toward midcentury modern and 1960s design, so we often buy secondhand. Most of our décor is pieced together from trips to local flea markets, secondhand stores, and yard sales, and from perusing craigslist. We’re definitely bargain-hunters. We see our house as a work in progress. We’re constantly changing the décor, adding and taking away. It evolves with each new find.

When it came time to think about furniture, we opted to keep our vintage pieces and have them reupholstered. For our couch, we chose brown Italian theater velvet and for our chairs, we chose remnants from the Holly Hunt collection that our upholsterer had left over from a previous commission.

We also splurged on the shelving in our main room. Ron's a vinyl junkie and we both love books. We needed quality pieces that were modern and functional to house our favorite books and Ron's record collection. Our good friend Amy Devers is an amazing furniture designer and carpenter. She and Ron worked together to come up with a design that fit the room, and Amy built all the custom hardwood casework herself.

Over the years we've collected a group of paintings, serigraphs, lithographs, etchings, drawing, prints, pottery, and glass that suit our taste. Many of the midcentury pieces are from artists associated with the Chouinard School in California, but they're peppered with an original Chagall (thanks, St. Vincent de Paul!), an early Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, various works by talented friends, and the occasional anonymous trash-heap find.

Our house is surrounded by bamboo, which grows incessantly and Ron trims regularly. We have so much of it, in fact, that we’ve begun to display some of the taller trimmings as vertical elements throughout the house. As they dry and age, the bamboo changes from green to a neutral color. It’s a nice homage to the living bamboo you see through the windows.

We tend to display the things we collect — pottery, ceramics, cast iron kitchenware — in larger groups to add visual interest.

Our biggest challenge is keeping our love of 'things' from taking over the house. To control our ever-growing collections, we recently started an Etsy store called the White Mole, where we sell some of our finds so we don’t have to start charging them rent.

We used Ralph Lauren paints throughout our home — specifically the Vintage Masters Collection. Our bedroom is painted in the Olive Tree shade.

We got a great deal on a set of black leather Le Corbusier-style couches that we use in our movie room. The paint color is Ralph Lauren's New Castle Brown.

Ron built the table in our 'Japanese tea room' from an antique head- and footboard that our neighbors were getting rid of. He designed custom fasteners to bring the two pieces together and had glass fitted for the tabletop. I’m so proud of how he was able to creatively repurpose something old and give it a new life. It’s a great conversation piece.

We love our home’s original wood windows. We don’t use window treatments, except in our bedroom and in the movie room (where we need the option of keeping light out), so it really brings in a nice sense of the immediate outdoors.

In our backyard, which is built on a hillside so that it has tiers, we’ve tried to create separate spaces, each evoking an emotional response. For example, a space you’d want to meditate in versus a space you’d want to entertain in versus a space you’d want to read in.

Our advice: Don’t be afraid to mix things up. Add your own touch by playing with different textures and shapes that speak to you. Put something old next to something new, and both items will have an added sense of character."

Thanks so much for sharing your enchanting home and garden with us, Sheharazad and Ron! (Pssst — you can check out even more of it on their flickr set.)

P.S. Want to see more? Click here for a look inside other readers' homes.

Wanderlust: Holiday in the Sun

Ah, January -- back to reality. I hope you all had a lovely holiday. Before we get back into the regular swing of things, I wanted to share some snaps of our winter break. We hit the road heading south in search of sunshine and swanky retro fabulousness, and for the most part, that's what we got.

So this is the house we rented in Palm Springs. I meant to take a few snaps inside, but then forgot. Dwell on Design did a video tour of the place a few years ago (click on "Wexler Harrison House"). The furnishings are all different now, but you'll get the idea.

This house is really all about the backyard, anyway.

I think I took these pictures of the kids frolicking in the pool on Christmas Eve. It's just wrong, I know.

Elvis and Priscilla spent their wedding night here.

Trina Turk Residential was fun in an over-the-top, Palm Beach kind of way. (I was too shy to snap pics there; the ones above were borrowed from The Contemporist.) And there was the 111 Antique Mall, a great jumble of a secondhand store in a random strip mall north of downtown. (Thanks to the always-chic Maison 21 for the tip on that one!) I lusted after a pristine and decently priced set of teak dining chairs and a bunch of midcentury pottery there, but didn't get a chance to return for them after my initial hurried run through the shop. Just as well, because we're totally broke.

All told, though, I have to say that I wasn't too impressed with the shopping in Palm Springs. The other stores I visited were mostly obscenely overpriced midcentury boutiques (trust me -- you can do way better on eBay and craigslist) or equally overpriced trend emporiums that looked like a Z Gallerie exploded inside. Asylum, pictured above, was probably the least offensive of them. Elsewhere, I saw a lot of things that I'm positive the shop owners picked up at Pier 1, the Z, and even IKEA and tripled the price on before putting them out on their floors.

Besides shopping and driving around random neighborhoods, my favorite thing to do on vacation is hang out at hotels we can't actually afford to stay in. And, of course, you simply can't go to Palm Springs without checking out the Jonathan Adler-designed Parker.

I'm finding myself less and less of a fan of Adler's pottery and product design (most of which seems to be shamelessly ripped off from original midcentury pieces). But I still love his interiors, which have a great sense of exuberance, wit, and fun.

The Parker's lounge almost makes me miss my parents' circa-1974 living room. Almost.

Plus, the grounds are gorgeous.

Brunch on the patio at Norma's. There were a lot of hungover, sunglasses-sporting Hollywood hipster types sucking down Bloody Marys when we visited.

The gift shop is a bit Legally Blonde, no?

Here's Nick hamming it up at Mister Parker's. If you're in the area and want to drink old-school cocktails and spend $400 on dinner (thanks, Mom!), this is the place for you.

We also stopped by Kelly Wearstler's Viceroy Hotel, which was super-glam and swanky. I'm pretty sure this is the yellow-and-white tile wall featured on the cover of Modern Glamour. Can't you just picture Kelly striking a pose here in some insane couture ball gown?

One of the cleaning ladies saw us wandering around drooling, took pity on us, and invited us to poke our heads inside a Viceroy suite. Sweet!

One of the property's three pools. If I ever win the lottery, I'm moving here.

The pool cabana, darlings.

The recently refurbished Riviera Resort is more Vegas than Palm Springs, but is definitely worth a gander.

These portraits of local legends (this one is Bob Hope, of course) were made entirely of sparkly bits of metal. Sadly, the shot I took of the pre-surgery Cher in all her glory didn't turn out.

My 13-year-old says he want to be a cabana boy here when he grows up. That's right -- aim high, my love.

In a future life, I think I'll need an enormous, patent-leather wing chair.

Something about this place makes me want to drink whiskey and eat steak.

One day, we actually got out of town to explore the desert. (Sara Bethell, I hope you're happy.) I am so not a nature person, but I'll admit that Joshua Tree is pretty amazing. Strangely, though, I still haven't found what I'm looking for ...

OK, on to L.A.: I would love to tell you that we did fabulously cool things there -- but the fact is, we mostly drove around kind of aimlessly, tried to visit a bunch of stores that were closed for the holidays (of the ones we managed to get in, ReForm School was my favorite), did some dorky touristy stuff the kids begged to do, and sat around at my sister- and brother-in-law's little Silverlake bungalow, noshing on vegan treats and watching DVR'ed episodes of Whatever, Martha. (I'm now completely addicted -- and think I may be even more terrified of Alexis Stewart than I am of her mother. Thanks, guys!) It was lovely, if not terribly exciting.

Dinner at the Farmer's Market with Nick's beautiful sister and her hilarious husband.

My husband makes a pilgrimage to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Sunset Strip Guitar Center.

The weather was insane -- mid 70s and sunshine the whole time we were there.

There's no questionable taste quite as awesome as L.A. questionable taste; don't miss the naked statues of David in the background. (Photo courtesy of my BIL.)

All in all, it was great fun -- although we're going to be eating rice, beans, and Top Ramen and Netflixing it on date night for months while our wallets recover.

How were your holidays?