When you sit upon a star
Designers ARE THE ROCK STARS of the new millennium. Everybody wants to be one: The matinee appeal can be huge, the money huger. Movie and music stars become fashion designers, fashion designers become home furnishings designers, home furnishings designers become rich and famous and, sometimes, famous all over again. Don’t say there aren’t second acts, even after death.
I can’t keep up. Just when I’d gotten used to, and actually fond of, the initials way of decorating -- RL, CK -- I had to adapt to another design movement: The Dead Celebrity Collections. Hemingway. Come again? I could now live my life through his life by the simple act of buying furniture. Kenya, Key West, Ketchum, Paris, Havana, Windermere -- with a piece from each line, I could travel three continents and the Caribbean with him.
OK, I got used to that, too. Understood the allure. Wanted the Kilimanjaro bed. And then, sometime in early March, I saw a new TV ad. I was riveted. I was also baffled.
You know the one: Gorgeous brunet in slinky evening gown ascends stone steps; camera closes in on her swaying backside (calling to mind Jennifer Lopez, the actress and fashion designer). Couples dance under the arches of a grand villa. Inside, trumpeter in white tails plays. And through a doorway flanked by palms, we see emerge: Bogie. Flashbulbs go off. Photographers in fedoras and reporters in white gloves surround not the star, but a plum-colored chaise, a bureau, a tall screen.
“Between Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, you can feel it everywhere,” the voice-over intones. “This was the era of glamour, elegance and romance. An era personified by one man. Humphrey Bogart....Now Thomasville presents the Bogart Collection.”
What did Humphrey Bogart know about club chairs, except how to be directed to sit in one?
I had to get to the bottom of this. Mitch Scott, head of licensing at Thomasville, and the man responsible for propelling Hemingway into a wildly successful furniture line, helped me out as much as he could. Bogie had as powerful a persona as Hemingway, he explained, one big enough to evoke a certain image and thereby a certain desire for that image, and thereby a certain sales potential. But how did they decide on Bogie and not, say, Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?
Well, in fact, they hadn’t thought of it in the first place. Bogie and Bacall’s son Stephen had. He governs the estate, and it was he who approached Thomasville.
So I tracked down Stephen Bogart at his home in New Jersey. “I saw the Hemingway ads,” he told me in his deep, raspy, eerily familiar voice, evidence that there are vocal cord genes. “And I said, ‘Jeez, this would be great for my father.’ ”
He wrote, they called. A deal was struck. They asked him what was in his father’s house. Mostly, what he remembered -- he was only 8 when Bogie died in 1957 -- was dark woods, leather and comfort. “My father liked comfortable,” he said. “That, above all.”
The Bogie and Bacall voice. Then the clink of ice in crystal over the wires. That small tinkling sound evoked more for me of Bogie than any of the TV ads could ever possibly do. For one lovely moment, I was transported. It was the 1940s. I was glamorous. Everything was in glorious black and white.
I had to know: Was Stephen drinking a double scotch, I hoped, or a martini on the rocks?
“Diet Coke,” he told me.
A crash back to the present. Garish Technicolor.
Still, I was intrigued. So I drove to the Thomasville store in Encino to check out what it had in stock. The Bogart section was akin to entering a Hollywood time warp, sort of, one filtered through a 2003 lens -- leathered, dark-wooded, gleaming reinterpretations of Deco pieces for every room.
Surrounded by the Marmont Bar cabinet, the Sunset Boulevard cocktail table, the Liberte game table, the Silver Screen and the Hollywood Vanity, I started my comfort sit test. I sat on the Mon Amour chaise and the Contessa Banquette. I sat in the Trench Coat chair, the Martini chair, the Bogie chair, the Bel Air side chair and, finally, in my favorite, the Big Kiss chair with the big fat ottoman. I couldn’t -- couldn’t bear to -- get up from it. Yes, it was that comfortable. I wanted it.
On my way out, a small table with a silver top caught my eye.
“Oh, that’s the Chesterfield accent table,” the saleswoman told me. “That was in the gift bag for all the Oscar people.”
It was?
“I mean certificates for them were.”
Celebrities redeeming tickets for celebrity tables. It was getting to be too much for one woman in one day.
Will there be any more collections by deceased icons from Thomasville?
“No,” Mitch Scott says. “There’s a certain contentment and security in having the book of life completed.”
And now I’m gearing up for my next adjustment to the next trend: The Alive and Kicking Writer Collection. Frances Mayes, living author of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” unveiled her new Tuscan line at the High Point market earlier this month, to be in stores by late summer. I’m sure I’ll fall for that, too. Stay tuned.
The seats of power
While I’m on the subject of chairs: I stopped in at the Pacific Design Center to see firsthand a few of the 40 chairs created by some of America’s A-list designers that were auctioned off by House Beautiful at an event called Chair-ity to benefit Children’s Action Network. All of them were snatched up, at an average of more than $1,000 each.
What I wanted to see, more than anything, was how the personas of Penelope Cruz, Melanie Griffith, Rene Russo, Henry Winkler, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman were reflected in the chairs they inspired. Would Penelope’s be red-hot? Would Melanie’s be puffed up, puffed out? Rene’s be long and lean and hennaed? Henry’s wild and wacky? Danny’s and Rhea’s low to the floor?
The answer to all the above: yes.
My choice for the one I would have plunked down that kind of cash for was inspired not by a star, but by the sea. A whole shoreline of shells, it seemed -- big, medium and small -- encrusted the arms, legs, back, seat. A Victorian-style lamp was attached and swooped over grandly with its dripping beads. Of course, using this mad beauty of a chair for reading would have been all wrong, if for no other reason than the impossibility of sitting in it.
But who’s complaining? I’ll have my soft brown leather Bogart for that.
Barbara King, editor of the Home section, can be reached at barbara.king@latimes.com.
