Tag: Los Angeles

A Singular Vision: AHLEM’s New Design-Forward Atelier 

Posted on by The Editors

AHLEM, the global luxury eyewear brand founded by French-born Ahlem Manai-Platt, recently opened a fifth boutique. And just as with its other locations—in Paris’s St. Germain, San Francisco’s Hayes Valley, New York City’s Nolita, and L.A.’s Venice—the latest atelier is housed in a space as relevant and chic as its eyewear. Designed to be the flagship, the new Melrose Place store offers a quiet oasis in buzzy West Hollywood. 

AHLEM isn’t the typical eyewear brand (is there another that would namecheck Bauhaus as a guiding creative principle?)—nor is its newest boutique the average optical store. Eyeglasses rest on minimalist inset wall shelving with gallery-like lighting. And the store’s design, spearheaded by architect Maja Bernvill, was inspired by not one, but three rather high-brow source materials.

First is architect Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Odawara Art Foundation in Japan. When Manai-Platt visited the museum, she experienced, she says, “the absolute stillness—almost sacred—and the raw emotion” of walking through a suspended space between matter and light. 

Second is Richard Serra’s masterpiece at LACMA, a curving monolith of Corten steel. “I wanted the Melrose space to offer that same emotional resonance: a quiet intensity, where architecture invites you to feel rather than simply see,” says Manai-Platt. 

And third, and perhaps most significantly, is the influential work of Rudolph Schindler, the mid-century architecture great who, in many of his projects in L.A., elevated authentic, humble materials like wood, plaster, glass, and steel, all of which are spotlighted in AHLEM’s Melrose location. “This space is not about recreating Schindler, though,” says Bernvill, who was brought on to turn Manai-Platt’s heady ideas into concrete plans. “It’s about being in dialogue with his theories and the Californian context he worked in.”  

“Ahlem and I share a belief in precision, restraint, and atmosphere, so the design becomes a kind of quiet choreography between form, light, and material,” says Bernvill. 

For more on AHLEM, visit ahlemeyewear.com; to a book a consulation at the new Melrose Place atelier, go here. 

Home Is Where the Store Is? A Welcoming Retail Trend in Los Angeles

Posted on by Abigail Stone

What design aficionado hasn’t admired the wallpaper, furniture, or cabinetry in someone else’s home?  

Compare the intimacy of that encounter with the sensory overload of confronting an entire warehouse of potential pieces. There’s an undeniable appeal to seeing the articles in situ rather than in a showroom. “It’s a lot less clinical,” says interior designer Nina Takesh, who used furniture from her eponymous collection to stage an abode in the hills above Los Angeles. “You can experience the pieces the way they might actually appear in your home.” 

Future Perfect Los Angeles
Future Perfect

Little wonder, then, that some of the city’s most elevated showrooms have chosen to roost inside luxurious dwellings discretely tucked into residential neighborhoods. Three years ago, the Future Perfect, a collectible furniture and accessories emporium often credited for jumpstarting the trend on the West Coast, relinquished the roving aspect of their business model, settling into the Samuel Goldwyn house, a neoclassical estate near Runyon Canyon that doubles as the home of the company’s founder, David Alhadeff.

Kimberly Denman Showroomm
Kimberly Denman

Furniture designer Kimberly Denman and her business partner Laurent Rebuffel spotlight Denman’s compelling designs in a sprawling apartment at the Talmadge, an elegant Renaissance Revival building in Koreatown. Interior designer Trip Haenisch has reimagined the small bungalow just off trendy Melrose Avenue (formerly his office) as Galerie 658, a showcase for globally-sourced vintage décor. “Seeing things next to each other allows clients to understand how different pieces might fit together,” Haenisch says. 

Thus Huma
Thús Huma

Other appointment-only spaces ensconced in private homes around town include French wallpaper maker De Gournay’s 11-room pied-à-terre in the Hollywood Hills, an immersive exploration into its hand-painted designs; interior designer Huma Sulaiman’s Thús Huma, an experiential cottage in West Hollywood christened after the Frisian word for “home,” showcases a rotating display of contemporary artwork alongside pieces, like her Chandigarh chair, that seamlessly integrate her modern sensibilities with her Bangladeshi heritage; Stroll Garden, which recently presented a show of ceramic works by Diana “Didi” Rojas at a Spanish-style residence in the Hollywood Hills; Una Malan’s intimate Una Casa Privada, located above the Sunset Strip, featuring furniture, lighting, and textiles. “It’s my personal stage,” says Malan. 

Un Casa Privada
Una Casa Privada

The house, as they say, always wins.