It was clear while ascending to the Pacific Design Center that Design.Space — the inaugural retail experience blending rare design, art and fashion — was for the heads. In the parking lot, I spotted a woman wearing a coat from the Row, another in a pair of Miu Miu thong-boots. The signaling was subtle but clear: We come to this place for flexing. I followed them and other stylish people to the top floor of the center, where rooms holding rare works of art, housewares, furniture and fashion awaited.
The point for Jesse Lee — founder of the online design marketplace, Basic.Space, which organized Design.Space last weekend — was less see and be seen, and more: see, be seen, and most importantly: buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Everything was for sale, from the niche perfumes of Troye Sivan’s Tsu Lange Yor, to the red Chirac Sofa by Paulin Paulin Paulin X Christo & Jeanne-Claude X Parley for the Oceans, shown in an all-red room. Outside, French architect and designer Jean Prouvé’s iconic gas station from 1969 made its debut on American soil.
Other participants included fashion brands and vintage dealers, from 424 to Justin Reed; cornerstones of Italian design, like Memphis Milano and Edizioni del Pesce by Gaetano Pesce. One-of-one art objects, like the silver and crystal-encrusted can openers and martini glasses from the Future Perfect’s Perfect Nothing Catalog. While many, if not most, of the pieces shown at the fair were museum worthy, Design.Space was never intended to be a museum, says Lee. It’s not a passive experience, but an interactive, high-stakes marketplace.
Walking through Design.Space felt like being in the fanciest department store in an upscale mall 30 years ago — before malls were mere skeletons, before we spent all our time scrolling on the Real Real or 1stDibs. Design.Space was filled with the sexiness and tension of the shopping experiences of yore. There was crispy white carpet in rooms featuring iconic design pieces from the Italian design house Gufram, including the Pratone lounge chair in the vibrant shape and color of oversized blades of grass. There were performance art elements from other vendors. Enorme was selling its original 1985 phone designed by Jean Pigozzi, Ettore Sottsass and David Kelley in a set made to look and feel like an ‘80s office, including a model in period-perfect styling, hair and makeup, speaking on said phone. It felt like watching a movie. There were also moving moments of discovery. I was stunned to find that the beautiful, silver bean bag chair I was immediately drawn to (and almost plopped down on) was actually a 2007 sculpture made of rock-hard aluminum by Cheryl Ekstrom, presented by JF Chen.
Lee was inspired by his own experiences of shopping at Barney’s in Beverly Hills (RIP) as a design-obsessed youth, before he had the means to be shopping at Barney’s. “What we want this to be is obsessively curated and unapologetically commercial,” Lee says. “What I miss is what Barney’s was for me 10 years ago. It wasn’t about the prices or what I bought, but it was more about the fact that I could easily spend six, seven hours really immersing myself in the experience of this luxury store.”
Design.Space also feels like a subtle protest of this new L.A. aesthetic that has emerged in the last 15 years — blond wood, airy, minimalist design, a plant in the corner — that Lee (and I, and many others) have grown fatigued over. These spaces scream: “We’re casual, we’re accessible.”
With Design.Space, Lee says: “I want this experience to have a little bit of intimidation.”
As we were scouring the racks from Archived, a rare designer fashion and furniture showroom, one of my Design.Space companions, an editor, noted: “Alex Israel just took his glasses off.” We collectively realized we’d never actually seen the artist without his sunglasses, but in this context it made the most sense. These pieces we were all poring over demanded a closer look: From an Autumn/Winter 2002 Gucci shearling fur coat, to a pair of perfectly worn-in Helmut Lang leather pants from the late ‘90s that made me salivate. In the same exhibiting room was Hommemade, A$AP Rocky’s interior design studio. It featured the Hommemade Cafe, which was serving a meticulous espresso martini, and the Hommemade entertainment console and professional studio on wheels — complete with a projector, microphones, snack dispenser and rolling tray. Rocky’s first collection with Ray-Ban as its newly appointed creative director was also on display. Later that evening, Rocky himself made an appearance, effectively consecrating his own corner of the fair and Design.Space as a whole.
Design.Space was invite-only. And its invitees felt like a rare group, for whom niche furniture designers and archival fashion pieces existed in tabs that lived side by side in their brains. It was different from the crowd of patrons you might see at a traditional art fair (not enough rizz), different from those, even, whom you may see at a fashion party (performative rizz). These people, it was clear, were intentional about the capital D-design of everything in their lives, from their jackets to their salt and pepper shakers.
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