William Sofield : Here and Now

New York designer William Sofield has been occupied with two remodeling projects in Los Angeles, one looking forward and one drawing on the past, “a nice counterpoint,” he said.

The first--the redesign of the Beverly Hills Gucci store on Rodeo Drive--is part of a project that has catapulted him into the international fashion limelight. Tapped by Gucci International creative director Tom Ford to design a 21st century look for his fired-up couturier empire, Sofield has been hopping around the globe revamping the flagship stores.

The Beverly Hills Gucci was relaunched earlier this year with a limestone facade and chaste interior, its black and gray walls and geometric stainless steel fixtures showing off the famous Gucci handbags, shoes and sexy dresses to best effect.

As if a schedule that rotates him from Tokyo to Milan to New York to Los Angeles weren’t enough to keep him busy, Sofield, a bachelor who notes that “the only emotion I fear is boredom,” is also reconstructing a sprawling 1910 Craftsman house in Laurel Canyon once owned by Douglas Fairbanks.

Not only will it be his Los Angeles residence (“To be able to open your window and smell orange blossoms or pick an orange off a tree is really a great experience”), it will also serve as a West Coast branch of his Studio Sofield. That’s the Manhattan architecture and design business he established in 1996 to provide services for projects that range from two-room apartments to hotels and corporate offices.

Sofield, who, at 38, is being heralded in the design press as traveling “on fabulosity’s fast track,” is branching out and will divide his time between coasts. And he fits right in here. An amiable conversationalist with a jovial laugh who seems amazingly laid-back considering his hectic life, he relaxed over lunch recently at the Mondrian Hotel, after showing off the gleaming new Gucci store.

He was wearing head-to-toe black Gucci, his favorite label.

“I love the cut of this leather jacket,” he said. “I think people design for themselves, and Tom and I are about the same age.” And although he appeared in the February GQ wearing a white coarse cotton Gucci jacket and pants, he is no clotheshorse, reserving his passion for the design of buildings.

He Enjoys the

SoCal Lifestyle

Sofield was just back from Milan and headed for Tokyo, thriving on the global scope of the Gucci project, he said.

“I am really still very much a kid, and there are so many interesting, fabulous things,” he said. “I love seeing those different cultures in juxtaposition.”

And he loves returning to L.A. Like his friend Ford, who has dubbed Los Angeles “the next hot city to watch,” the East Coast-born Sofield has long been attracted to Los Angeles.

“I adore New York, it’s a stimulating city, but different than Los Angeles--you are so constantly thrown closely with people that you have a great regard for private space. In New York, you might nod to someone you know, seated at another table in a restaurant, but you would never pull up a chair and sit down!”

It’s not only the casual lifestyle of Los Angeles that pleases him (“It’s much less intimidating being here than it is being outside looking in”). As an artist and sensualist, he loves the light, the color and the general texture of the city. “You might find a Victorian cottage tucked between two office buildings.”

As a homeowner, he is putting down roots, meeting the neighbors in Laurel Canyon (“Everybody has some story about this house and Fairbanks and Mary Pickford--she was like the Madonna of her day”), staging an impromptu luncheon for visiting New York friends with takeout from Greenblatt’s and zipping around town in his black Mazda pickup, “finding antiques everywhere.”

Antiques are often an important part of a Sofield mix. His press resume describes him as a “rigorous Modernist with the ability to draw both the relaxed elements of popular culture and the traditions of the fine arts.”

Ford put it more succinctly: “It’s hard to be modern and luxurious at the same time, but Bill manages to pull it off.”

Typically, his own office, in the sleek Studio Sofield, is carpeted and mixes contemporary furniture with antiques.

“I have big upholstered chairs and furry draperies--there is definitely an unconventional feeling to the office.”

Although Sofield said he doesn’t have “a style,” he does have a philosophy: “Interior design is about problem-solving and working with what you’ve got.” He likes the notion of collaboration. “At the end of the day, I’m not living there. Some people are so terrorized by their designer they can’t go to a flea market without picking up a phone.”

A Style Borne of

Eclectic Influences

Sofield grew up in New Jersey and received his degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University. In the 1980s he received a Helena Rubinstein Fellowship from the Whitney Museum of American Art.

While he brings to his career an academic background in the history of art and European cultural studies, his first influence, he said, was his childhood home.

“It was Japanese in nature with very clean lines,” he said. “The way light entered and the way breezes went through were as much a part of the decoration as of the objects in it. I really carry that very much with me.”

Early in his career he worked for Ralph Lauren, whipping up interiors to showcase the home collection each season, a good exercise in redesigning the same room repeatedly.

He has redesigned his own career several times, starting with a “very proper old-boy architectural firm in which every project was started with a lawsuit and ended in a lawsuit--the epitome of ‘client as enemy.’ ”

Then he tried a more flamboyant jet-set company where the specialty was celebrity housing. “We did fabulous things and money was no object, but what was missing was a sense of integrity. I thought there had to be something in between.”

So he joined an 89-year-old Italian woodworker in his little shop on the Upper East Side, spending five years learning the work.

Since starting his own studio, Sofield has designed a handful of private residences, new Disney offices in California and the interior of SoHo Grand, a new hotel in New York City’s historic SoHo district.

Emanuel Stern, owner of the SoHo Grand Hotel, chose Sofield as architect even though most of his work had been smaller interior design projects. Stern was impressed with Sofield’s intellect and knowledge, he told Interior Design magazine.

“I felt he had his finger on the pulse of Manhattan,” Stern said.

Sofield’s woodwork training has led to work that is craft-oriented, in that he tends to “design and create, rather than purchase” and he finds Los Angeles a fertile field.

“I think there is a craft tradition alive here that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country,” said the designer, who knows the city’s history and considers a visit to the Gamble House--the Pasadena Arts and Crafts landmark--to be the ultimate religious pilgrimage.

This may be a function of sprawl and real estate, he said.

“Perhaps because L.A. is so spread out, small shops can afford to survive in urban areas,” he said. “You still have seamstresses, woodworkers, stone cutters who are active. I see a future drawing on these.”

Working With the

Stores’ Surroundings

Indeed, his tour of the new Gucci store started on the sidewalk, where he proudly pointed out the facade limestone from Indiana--one of the few quarries where cutting is still done with hand saws rather than computerized lasers.

The Gucci stores, he said, aim to be the architectural equivalent of Gucci clothes: “Modern but not minimalist.”

Although the interiors are similarly inspired by the clothing, each flagship building is different. “The Tokyo Gucci overlooks an extraordinary, serene shrine, and the Milan store is in a wonderful old palazzo. To ignore those elements would be a crime.”

He remodeled the Beverly Hills building from the ground up, adding a penthouse with wrap-around glass, mesh curtains and J. Robert Scott silk draperies that open to a view of the Beverly Hills rooftops, including a Frank Lloyd Wright steeple he recently discovered.

“There is such a level of disturbance in our lives, I wanted an air of serene calm,” Sofield said.

Ford admires Sofield “because he doesn’t think like a traditional architect. There is a real understanding about drama, theater and luxury and the way people interact within a space.” Furthermore, he said, Sofield “understands that the point of a store is to sell merchandise.”

Leading the way through the sleek store, Sofield agreed, demonstrating how drawers pull out smooth as silk and pointing out crafted details on the Modernist light fixtures.

“I’m a practical person,” he said, “and I would rather have a root canal than shop. That’s why I am a good retail designer. I am very sensitive to what makes people uncomfortable, such as the lack of privacy and personal space.” He’s also sensitive to the needs of the staff, which needs to have merchandise at hand when the customer asks to see another color.

Purchase Followed

Love at First Sight

With the Gucci project under his belt, Sofield can focus on his Laurel Canyon compound, where he’s been living throughout the considerable construction.

He believes the purchase was fated, having first spotted the house years ago on a visit when his morning run took him through Laurel Canyon. His initial love was revived when the house came on the market last year while he was home-shopping.

“It’s a great old house, modeled after the bridge buildings of the Imperial Palace of Japan, with an imposing front and a humble little bungalow in the back.”

The house was a wreck, he said, a “broken-down museum. You could put your arm through any portion of the foundation.”

The years of neglect, in some ways, have preserved the house. Nothing has been destroyed, and lots of the hardware had been pitched out in the backyard. Rummaging through the ivy, he found original faucets and all the doorknobs, and “may have found Mary Pickford’s hair gel under the tub--this is wonderful fun!”

He has found other treasures elsewhere. “I am on a flea market karma right now,” he said happily, citing an example:

He was on his way to the Golden Globe awards ceremony when he passed the Fairfax flea market and stopped, on an impulse. “I had a little time to spare and I have a continual shopping list. I am missing five Chinese vent tiles and the chances of finding five matched were almost zero, but there they were. It was eerie.”

Still weeks from completion, the stucco and copper-roof compound also includes a staff building with kitchen, a master pavilion suite, an overhead bridge and an underground complex that once housed a casino and wine cellar. Sofield has commissioned pieces, including murals, by contemporary artists, to fulfill his vision of a modern Craftsman house with “incredibly hip things in it.”

He already has a staff at work in the new office, which will be a satellite of New York, he said, with a similar mix of residential and commercial projects.

And he’s looking forward to living in it.

“For relaxation, I like to see friends, and I have dinner parties. I love to cook and used to be a chef.”

And he likes the L.A. idea of being able to drop in to a movie spontaneously, “not having to devote the better half of my day to it, like a rock concert.”

He also lectures at Parsons School of Design and supports a number of projects, including the Alzheimer’s Assn. and AIDS Project Los Angeles.

“I always say I’m going to settle down after the next two months,” he said, with a big laugh. “I’ll probably just keep saying it.”

Times staff writer Connie Koenenn may be reached by e-mail at connie.koenenn@latimes.com.