Westweek Festival Has Its Fringe

West Hollywood was more lively than usual these last few days with an estimated 15,000 persons attending Westweek, the interior design symposium-cum-trade show-cum-reunion that annually animates the Pacific Design Center.

While Westweek is a closed, well-catered, to-the-trade-only event, it does focus attention on the symbiotic design-oriented community swirling in the shadow of the hulking, cobalt blue-skinned center at Melrose Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard.

This year, inspired by the Westweek festivities, discreet banners declaring “avenues of design” have been hung from lampposts on sections of Melrose Avenue and Beverly and Robertson boulevards to call attention to the variety of design showrooms there.

And according to the sponsoring West Hollywood Marketing Corp., one does not need the business card of an architect or an interior designer to wander through and appreciate most of the showrooms. And certainly no card is needed to window shop.

Also in the area are some retail stores that, while not furniture, fixture or decorating outlets, are by their exquisite forms marvelous displays of the art and craft of interior design.

Indeed, the Catherine Marlet Boutique at 8810 Melrose Ave., since opening half a year ago has been attracting a steady stream of interior designers. Distinguished by a subdued, salt-stained ferro-cement facade, a soothing courtyard and a spare showroom, the retail complex is a minimalist delight.

But for all its starkness, the store designed by Catherine Marlet with the aid of architect Clive Bridgwater and artist Michael Tolleson is quite relaxed, generating a calming mood for its stylish clothes collection.

Across the street at 8825 Melrose Ave. is Maxfield, which includes space for its avant-garde line of clothes and that of Yohji Yamamoto’s. The cubist-styled concrete-sided complex, marked by an oxidized steel sign, is also in the minimalist mode.

However, with its theatrically lit interior of concrete walls and floors in white, gray and black tones, raw steel rails and shelves, vaulted raw wood ceiling and scattered art objects (such as a stereo encased in a concrete block), the mode is brutally rendered. And distinctive.

Maxfield is the creation of Tommy and Anne-Marie Perse, with Larry Totah, interior designer, and Studio 80, architects.

For a taste of high-tech design as fresh and engaging as ever after two years of wear, tear and trends, there’s Esprit, at the northeast corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica boulevards. Crafted by Joe D’Urso with his characteristic concern for details, the store provides an enticing stage set for the colorful line of Esprit de Corp’s sportswear--and a wealth of ideas for interior designers.

At Pacific Design Center itself, two exhibits of interest that were installed for Westweek will remain on public display for the next two months, albeit not on weekends when the center is closed.

In the first-floor rotunda is a grouping of furniture pieces designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Organized by Martha Drexler Lynn and sponsored by the County Museum of Art, the collection examines the design process of the Eameses, who as a couple elevated the title of designer.

And in the west end of the first-floor lobby is a captivating display of variations of the tubular steel chair that blossomed between 1925 and 1940. The display is the creation of the inventive Museum of the Continuous Line.

For something quite different, be it shock value or comic relief, there is the Italin design gallery open to anyone who dares enter at the corner of the garish black-and-white marble-stripped mall at 8500 Melrose Ave.

Among the displays is a grouping of the most up-to-date kitchen appliances, placed in a grossly rendered cave replete with a boar’s head and Stone Age utensils. Designer Fred (Flintstone?) Rassouli described the concoction as a 4,000 BC setting for AD 2,000 appliances.

“It is a step beyond form and function,” said Rassouli. To be sure, a very big step, and I’m not sure in what direction.

Other displays in the store include a fireplace framed in thick red lips, a vanity with drawers in the form of breasts, a mirror-enclosed bed featuring mood lighting and a built-in media center, and a traditional kitchen, except for the realistic rubber snakes in the refrigerator and elsewhere. Rassouli calls the style “fusionart,” and says it’s geared to the person who wants to express his or her individuality and fantasies.

I didn’t even bother asking the prices, but left to continue the random tour of West Hollywood’s distinctive design world.