Step inside an unapologetically fun, midcentury home in the City of Angels that we are lusting over big time. Interior designer Jamie Bush and architect William Hefner reimagined a dwelling for a celebrity client with a dazzlingly eccentric point of view. Here style director Louise Hilsz shares how to steal L.A.-based model, fashion journalist and mum Mary Kitchen's style.
A Waterford crystal chandelier, original to the house, crowns the living room. Sofas by Coup Studio; cocktail table by Armand Jonckers; Charles De Lisle lamps atop Facture Studio pink resin tables; French 1950s armchairs and Gio Ponti stools in DimoreStudio fabrics. Artworks by Cindy Sherman (left) and John Baldessari.
Boxy Chandigarh chairs and raw linen. Dinesen oak floors and rustic farm tables. Fifty shades of beige. “I didn’t want any of that,” says Los Angeles-based freelance entertainment and fashion journalist, Mary Kitchen. “I wasn’t looking for a cool midcentury house in the Hollywood Hills, with exquisitely tasteful interiors,” she says, adding emphatically, “I didn’t want a house that looks like everyone else’s.”
Mission accomplished. Ably abetted by her team of, well, let’s call them her enablers—interior designer Jamie Bush, architect William Hefner, and landscape maestro Raymond Jungles, Kitchen has conjured a blockbuster vision of Los Angeles swank, at once nostalgic and contemporary, sexy and funny, high-brow and low. With its circular skylights, colour-blocked rooms, and pink-tinged indoor-outdoor terrazzo floors, the house represents a fearless pasticcio of Hollywood Regency, Art Deco, Palm Springs camp, tropical modern, granny chic, and a dash of Morris Lapidus–style Miami Beach cha-cha. It’s a heady brew, made all the more intriguing by Kitchen’s unapologetic refusal to abide by the shibboleths of modern taste - like the idea that selecting a painting because it matches the colour of a sofa is somehow inherently vulgar.
Lozenge-shaped skylights mirror twin kitchen islands topped in emerald quartzite. Stools by Studio Van den Akker, custom brass hardware by Pashupatina, and sink fittings by Waterworks. Floors here and throughout by Hermosa Terrazzo.
Get the look
Smeg Artisan Stand Mixer, $1119. Lightness Grant Pendant light, $669, Resene Sea Nymph paint available from Resene ColorShops. Elysian commercial pull-out kitchen mixer, $637.
“The house is a glamorous throwback fantasy, but it’s also weirdly unfashionable. Mary pushed it in the most courageous way. Most people simply wouldn’t have the chutzpah,” Bush says of his audacious client, a television presenter, model, and philanthropist dedicated to cancer research, children’s arts education, and a host of other causes. Kitchen’s fictional backstory for the project involved a widowed L.A. socialite - a grande dame of the old school who built the house in the late 1940s or early ’50s and maintained it, in all its recherché glory, until Kitchen and her husband acquired the property upon her passing. In reality, the Hollywood Regency style abode, nestled in tony Holmby Hills, was designed by architect Caspar Ehmcke and built-in 1966. The residence is located just blocks from the landmark Brody House, a collaboration between architect A. Quincy Jones and decorator William Haines, which served as one of several stylish midcentury touchstones for the current renovation. Kitchen and her husband purchased the home from rock star Adam Levine and his wife, model Behati Prinsloo Levine, who had taken the interior down to the studs before abandoning the project in search of greener pastures elsewhere in the city.
Vintage Carlo Scarpa for Venini pair of chandelier hang above a Leighton Hall Furniture Regency-style mahogany dining table with 19th-century Gustavian chairs in Rogers & Goffigon mohair velvet. Sideboard by Paolo Buffa, painting by Alex Katz, and sculpture by Anat Shiftan from Hostler Burrows.
William Haines Designs stools in Pavoni leather pull up to the bar in a corner of the expansive living room. The piano is a Walter Dorwin Teague design for Steinway & Sons, and the painting is by Frank Stella. The pool cabana is outfitted with a suite of India Mahdavi rattan furniture for Ralph Pucci and a vintage games table and chairs.
Freelance entertainment and fashion journalist, model, and mother of three Mary Kitchen, in an Oscar de la Renta gown and Lorraine Schwartz jewellery, sits in front of a Walter Dorwin Teague piano for Steinway & Sons and a Frank Stella painting. Fashion styling by Dena Giannini. Hair by Renato Campora; makeup by Fiona Stiles; manicure by Masako Leone at MCNail Atelier.
“Honestly, the house wasn’t that great, but it had generous rooms with 14-foot ceilings and a few details that were worth preserving. Mary didn’t want to lose the original character entirely, so we tried to imagine what the house might have been if it had really exceptional period architecture,” Hefner recalls. Working within the original footprint, the architect completely recast the character of the structure by flattening its pitched roof, adding spruce modern eaves and corner windows, and cladding the formerly stucco exterior in white-painted reclaimed brick, the same material he used for outdoor screens, planters, and brise-soleils, as well as a few strategic walls of the interior. “It’s not a slavish re-creation of one particular style, but it has the right spirit and it feels familiar,” the architect says.
A 1970s Italian glass pendant hangs above a custom banquette in Keleen Leather with a Studio Van den Akker table and chairs in the breakfast nook. While the circular entry hall is centred on a Sabine Marcelis resin table for Etage Projects. The 19th-century crystal chandelier is original to the house, transplanted from the dining room. Ceramic vessels by Magnus Maxine from The Future Perfect.
Get the look
Coco Republic Aspen Leather sofa, $4495. Bohobara Rattan Mahalo Occasional Chair, $849. Furniture by Design Terrazzo Round Dining Table, $1652. Flux Asymmetrical ll wall mirror, $189.
“Zoning the house by colour allowed us to control the incredible variety of pieces and themes that Mary was drawn to, all these great things from far-flung periods and places. Once we established the rules, we were free to play within those boundaries,” Bush explains. As an example, he cites the merry mélange of furnishings and artworks collected in the extravagant living room: pedigreed Italian designs by Gio Ponti and Osvaldo Borsani; a restored seven-foot-wide Waterford crystal chandelier original to the house; William Haines barstools upholstered in Pepto-Bismol pink leather; a Walter Dorwin Teague piano for Steinway & Sons; fuddy-duddy vintage Louis XV–style bergères from Phyllis Morris; a 1970s brass banana-leaf sculpture; signature artworks by John Baldessari, Cindy Sherman, and Yayoi Kusama; and a massive Frank Stella Protractor painting articulated in, you guessed it, shades of pink and peach.
The pool cabana is outfitted with a suite of India Mahdavi rattan furniture for Ralph Pucci and a vintage games table and chairs. While the den is furnished with a Baxter sofa from Diva Group, a vintage biomorphic cocktail table of curly maple, and a Haas Brothers Beast bench. The painting is by Ed Ruscha.
Kitchen’s three daughters, wearing Minnow swimsuits, Celine sunglasses, and vintage swim caps, by the pool of their L.A. home. The lanai (porch or veranda) is outfitted with Gio Ponti and Franco Albini rattan chairs for Bonacina 1889 covered in Dedar fabric, an India Mahdavi cocktail table for Ralph Pucci, and custom sofas in Perennials fabric, and Marc Phillips abaca rugs.
The master bedroom has a custom bed in Pierre Frey fabric, vintage Williams Haines lamps, an alpaca shearling rug by Marc Phillips, and artworks by John Baldessari (above the bed) and Anne Truitt.
Get the look
EDRA Cipria Sofa by Fernando and Humberto Campana, $POA. ByOn Vase Curlie Multi, $325. Coco Republic Westwood Bench, $895. Resene Wallcovering Collection 91291 available from Resene ColorShops.
The kitchen’s bedroom and Mary’s dressing room are the envy of our office, where the Charles Hollis Jones Lucite chair sits beneath a Murano chandelier in a dressing room. While the home office has a Campana Brothers chair for Edra, a Luigi Caccia Dominioni table lamp, David Bonk wallpaper from Thomas Lavin, and an Anne Collier photograph.
The architect replaced the original pitched roof with a flat one and re-clad the structure in reclaimed brick.
Bush peppered his various ensembles with bits of old-fashioned finery—Sherle Wagner marble toilets and gilt-finished fixtures, accent walls of smoky beveled mirror, Dorothy Draper cut velvets, bullion-fringed pool umbrellas—as well as humble midcentury materials such as Formica, linoleum, cork, and vinyl. “Call it anti-establishment taste. These are things that most people wouldn’t want or would tear out of an old house,” Kitchen says of the more outré decorative effects sure to set the teeth of persnickety aesthetes on edge. “I just love that it feels fun to me,” she concludes. “At the end of the day, if you don’t have a sense of humor, what’s the point?”
A terrace features a Morris Lapidus–inspired steel trellis. Vintage outdoor patio set by Mathieu Mategot. The entry court has a Nathan Mabry sculpture, William Haines Designs chairs, and custom sconces by Paul Ferrante.
Photography by Stephen Kent Johnson
Styled by Michael Reynolds See more source https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mary-kitchen-midcentury-home-los-angeles
