Hasta La Ideas

There are many reasons to admire interior designer Kelly Wearstler: her fearless cabinet-of-curiosities-meets-old-Hollywood-on-an-acid-trip aesthetic, her largely unheralded skill for maximizing vertical space in even the most sprawling of interiors, her unceasing faith in shagreen (we’re with you, sister!). Having gone west to assess Wearstler and her maximal style for a recent profile in The New Yorker, writer Dana Goodyear reveals the designer’s aspirations to lifestyle brand-dom. “Someday, I want to have a store where I’ll sell accessories, furniture, and clothing, like Ralph Lauren,” says Wearstler. First up: crafty wearables that are just as exuberant as the rooms she designs.

For the past year, she has been working on a line of jewelry, scarves, bags, and belts. The collection includes necklaces made from heavy chains for chandeliers and others decorated with drawer pulls; wooden dowels as pendants; leather cuffs studded with upholstery nails; and brass beads from a lighting catalogue strung onto black silk ribbon….A mockup board in her office shows a photograph of her with an enormous tassel fringe in metallic gold wool, the kind that would be used to trim a piece of furniture, draped across her chest as a bib necklace.

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