This has been what the backside of The Peninsula has looked like, roughly since New Years. See the tiny blue thing dangling from the end of the crane? That’s a BIG dumpster, hauling debris down and building materials up to the rooftop where the normally glamorous pool and cabanas are. My little birds in the industry tell me that the design improvements made to the most exclusive retreat in Beverly Hills have been passed on by a number of designers, due to???

I think I’ll walk over and see if they reopened the pool on their estimated date…

…that this would be approved so soon. So there goes the neighborhood, until the three year construction period is over, starting with demo in June. I SO dread the dust and wondering what is in the particulate. I suppose the City Council made the best deal for the city that they could, and my idol Nancy Krasne was the one holding out for Beverly Hills.

It occurred to me as I sat on the terrace enjoying a glorious California morning the odd trivia that led to the painting currently housed a la John Saladino in my direct line of vision. The original muse for the painting was a staircase that led to a garage apartment on Charleville. I walk(ed) past it daily for years, conceived and painted the piece in the earlier years of my life here in Beverly Hills. I always thought that a child might think that a good witch or a fairy princess may be hiding at the top of those stairs.

In the first year of our marriage, the Husband rented that very garage for parking our extra car. I never did discover who actually does live at the top of those stairs…

It was not really fair to get so excited about Easter and then not spill the beans about what happened around here. All the cards with the critter’s adorable photo went in the mail, the Grandmother arrived from Mississippi without unpleasant travel events, bringing along “her baby’s” handpainted Easter basket and bunny. My bunny cookies were baked and all the goodies for the Husband, the Grandmother and the critter were collected in time to just relax and lie around watching the critter. Design Nomad dropped in, bringing in not only an adorable chenille basket and bunny, but also her customary (and much enjoyed) gift of macaroons from Boule’ AND macaroons from Paullette. We were in a confectionery euphoria!

Easter eating was brunch with “sugar bacon“, eggs and biscuits. Sugar bacon is one of those things people love to eat while talking about how disgusting it is and how it will kill you. It’s divine. We strolled in the perfect weather to Roxbury Park and the critter tried the swing for the very first time. I baked potatoes and grilled filets for dinner. It was a serene sensory weekend – good food, memories, beauty, peace and love.

I haven’t posted in so long! It’s not that I haven’t been collecting a bevy of quirky information that I have experienced lately. As a designer and artist I am always seeing the design in things and I have quite a few subjects to share. There’s Easter, construction at the Peninsula, new music and theatre, Doris Day and Madonna. So much blogging to be done. Stay tuned and we can get our fix…

The first day I worked at the glamorous Wilson and Associates office in Beverly Hills, I was asked to copy an entire specification book for a High Roller Suite of the MGM Mansions. It took all day and I was bored stiff. I was a good little copier, though, and I learned an awful lot about how to do specifications in that single exercise. At the end of the day, my boss, Maryellen McGeehee, said “Alexandra, Darrell, our principal designer needs an intern who knows about antiques to shop with him tomorrow? Can you come in a little early and meet him?”

I LOVED Darrell Schmitt immediately and we had a lot in common – he had lived and worked in New Orleans and we both also were painters. He was elegant and gracious, and the antique dealers on Melrose Place jumped up and down the minute we walked in the door. We shopped for rock crystal chandeliers and period desks with provenance from the Rothschilds. We shopped for fabrics at Nancy Corzine and J. Robert Scott. We sat in in fabulous club chairs and speculated if “Madame”, our Japanese client would find them comfortable. After that day, I primarily worked on Darrell’s preselections, as he was travelling most of the time. In order to do all this shopping, I had to get to know the PDC.

Maryellen took me for a quick tour to the “blue whale“, so that I could effectively complete my tasks and not become completely lost in the enormous building. I was in heaven! We shopped showrooms housing fabrics that to that point I’d only seen in fabric swatch books and now I was able to look at the fabric in giant wings – I could flip through them like I was shopping for a dress. I noted where all the best places were like Scalamandre, Brunschwig et Fils, Old World Weavers, Donghia, Rose Tarlow, and Clarence House. I mastered the parking garage and the concierge desk. I knew how to get from the green building to the blue building in record time.

This was now my home away from home. I would start to feel my energy level rise as soon as I walked up the ramp to the mezzanine. It almost wasn’t like work; it was my pleasure to find out as much as I possibly could every day. Have a question of academics like who makes the fabrics in the Oval Office? I would find out – it’s Scalamandre, by the way.

But…back to Westweek. Westweek is an annual event held in the springtime, and the showrooms host fabulous events for the designers like lectures, luncheons, cocktail parties, and product launches. Designers are able to meet the top practitioners in our field and have one on one conversations. It truly is a wonderful time of the year. I used to attend every event; which, was generally from nine in the morning until late in the evening. Louis finds the PDC terribly exhausting, what with all the treats he is given and the wide open spaces to run. Now I preview the new collections in the Atelier before the events. But it was the most exciting time for me. And it’s that time of year again-I may just hit up a party or two…

Ah it’s that time of year again, as evidenced by the arrival of the invitation to the always fabulous Kneedler Fauchere for a reception after the Jack Lenor Larsen event…

I can remember the first day I ever entered the Pacific Design Center. I was an intern working for Trisha Wilson and Associates in the summer of 1997. I was in my fourth semester of design school in New Orleans and at some point in February it occurred to me that in inevitably hot New Orleans summer was fast approaching, and that I really had to learn more about the eclectic architectural styles of Los Angeles. I got on the phone and called my Mississippi boys who lived in Los Angeles, and well, honestly most of them are gay and I thought “surely ONE of you has some interior design contacts!”

Well, I was not wrong, and they did not disappoint. By Easter I had three interviews: with Disney Studios‘ interior design department, with Kreiss furniture, and with Trisha Wilson and Associates. I flew to LA and spent a four day weekend to play a little and meet the people who may shape my career. The Disney interview really just fell through – they had some turnover, and well, I took it as an omen. I had a fun meeting with Tom Kreiss and the friends who arranged the interview, and determined that I would consider the job if it was offered, Kreiss is nice, but it really was more about sales.

I had never heard of Trisha Wilson and I couldn’t imagine that if I hadn’t heard of her, how big could she be? Oh, how naive was I? As I sat in the board room speaking with the designers, I saw incredible project boards. Design projects like Caesar’s Palace, huge residences in Tokyo, Restaurants in Bellagio – just to name a few. It was exactly where I wanted to be – a place where they actually designed things, had them made and then installed them. I was told at the interview that I would be placed in a pool of interns to work the Library – where all the catalogues and samples of everything the designers would use to plan projects! It was like being in a candy store! I loved them, and hey – Beverly Hills wasn’t bad!

I know I digress – the post is supposed to be about WestWeek at the PDC and I promise to wrap it up in time for you to make it to the parties.

It’s been so gorgeous outside that we have delighted in our strolls through the neighborhood. We spent a great deal of time last weekend in the flats at Will Rogers Memorial Park trying to get the perfect Easter photo of our critter, and I think we did it. We also did a little browsing in the looking for goodies for Easter. If chocolate is your thing, then Teuscher Chocolates of Beverly Hills is just divine. I sneaked back over there today to get a little something indulgent for Easter happies.

On the agenda for this week and the weekend: egg dyeing, cookie baking and decorating. Visit from Mom. Lunch at the Peninsula on Sunday. I’m not 100% on the Peninsula, though – I may stay home and bake a ham in Co-cola.

For about a year after I made my permanent move to Los Angeles, I was always stopping people and asking them if they were from New Orleans – or Mississippi. After plenty of “no’s” and way too many – “but don’t I know you?” conversations, it finally dawned on me that all these people are on TV! I don’t know them, I just saw them in the media and somehow thought that if I recognized them, they must be from my hometown.

Arleen Grace, were she not my neighbor, could have been one of these people. Arleen is a writer and producer and actress. She does lots of commercials and TV gigs like playing Martha Stewart any time they need a Martha Stewart on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and she also has a recurring role on the The Bold and The Beautiful. You know her but you don’t know her.

This is her latest commercial – Arleen is the flight attendant. She said that she had to flirt with and make coochie coo with the Cheetah for fourteen hours to get this Cheetos Ad…

Easter 2009, I meant to say…

It really IS coming along nicely, but just like any design project, it has to be researched for content, feasibility, style – fact and fiction have to do their part and get together before I’m able to do the fun part, which is – doing the actual painting. I will also tell you that the two main characters in this book, Louis xiv of Beverly Hills, and Chef, his Mississippi cousin, have been painted and they are really cute. I’ll be able to show more of this later, but I thought I’d share these cool color studies my husband photographed in the Atelier, and Louis xiv approving an intial sketch of his first adventure.