Faces to watch 2003

Roy McMakin

Designer/artist

A graduate of the fine-arts program at UC San Diego, McMakin began to turn heads when he turned to designing furniture, often adjusting scale and mixing painted wood and patterned fabrics in visions that were outside the ordinary but still completely functional. His work became a favorite in arts circles, adorning offices at the Getty Museum and private homes. Meanwhile, the Seattle resident has also been making art, playfully addressing the forms of furniture in ways not completely functional. A bookshelf, for example, might also look like a table turned on its side, with legs extending forward, as if for an embrace.

“Roy McMakin: A Door Meant as Adornment,” tracing his art and design, runs March 23 to June 29 at MOCA at the Pacific Design Center.

-- Susan Freudenheim

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Zac Posen

Fashion designer

He’s just 22, and already, his dresses have landed in the windows of Bloomingdale’s in New York and on a cadre of famous friends (Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore). But Posen is at the make-or-break stage of his career. His spring collection received mixed reviews, pushing the 1940s Hollywood theme too far for some. Will he be the next great American designer or further evidence that the fashion world can’t stop eating its young?

-- Booth Moore