A market that’s very Vegas
Shortly after actress and home TV personality Lisa Rinna cut the inaugural ribbon, Sammy, Frank and Dean joined showgirls and a gaggle of Elvises on Monday to herald the new 1.3-million-square-foot World Market Center, where thousands of the nation’s furniture retailers and manufacturers have gathered this week.
Like the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, this new 10-story landmark near downtown Las Vegas is populated with permanent manufacturer showrooms catering to architects and interior designers. At this inaugural market week running through Friday, the first of twice-yearly expositions, buyers have been scouting the latest in home fashions.
In true Vegas style, the market’s opening night celebration was an all-you-can-eat meet-and-greet overflowing with food, booze and impersonators. It was the capper to a daylong smorgasbord of self-promotion that included a march of penguins -- the plush, cuddly toy variety -- that were handed out at Magnussen Home to promote the Art Deco-influenced Sunset Blvd. collection by Cristina Ferrare, the former model who has refashioned herself as a designer.
“Trading Spaces” star Doug Wilson held court in a black-and-white lounge at City of Industry-based Harris Marcus Home’s showroom amid his collection of lamps made from mercury glass and crackle-glazed ceramics. Known for his over-the-top TV makeovers -- including a boudoir reconfigured as a Pullman sleeper car -- Wilson showed a tasteful restraint here, even if his lampshades were lined in a blue-purple iridescent silk.
“Vegas,” proclaimed the rakishly dimpled decorator with the spiky silver hair, “is a great showcase for the furniture industry, which needs freshness and excitement pumped into it.”
The World Market Center’s promoters plan just that: eight more buildings that will yield 12 million square feet of exhibition space by 2015 -- more than 250 football fields on a 57-acre campus -- suggesting that furniture buyers and manufacturers will be going west to seek their fortunes. That’s good news for California: Retailers and, later, shoppers will have access to fresh product lines, and the state’s independent manufacturers will have a new venue to show trendsetting designs.
The new center’s odds are good: Las Vegas has been a national leader in home appreciation and new construction. Close to 6,000 new residents arrive each month -- a burgeoning market for professional decorators. The show’s proximity to other fast-growing Western states and design-conscious cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco also suggests lucrative prospects for exhibitors.
The first building is fully leased with 250 vendors, and tenants of future buildings are being housed temporarily in nearby tents as well as in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
As of Monday, 1,200 exhibitors and 53,000 people -- mostly store buyers and interior designers -- had registered for this week’s market, spurring more industry rumblings that the show circuit’s top player, the twice-a-year International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., was getting a run for its money. The more established High Point has about 2,500 exhibitors and 70,000 attendees at its shows, according to its website.
Francesca Keck, the designer and buyer for her Malibu boutique, Kenshoma, chose Las Vegas to launch her latest line of ceramics and her first furniture collection.
“I’m not fond of High Point,” Keck said. “It’s a little too bland and it’s so sprawling that it’s extremely difficult to find anything interesting unless you happen to stumble across it.”
For Irwin Allen, president of Michels & Co., becoming a charter tenant in the World Market Center was a sure thing.
“Let’s see,” said Allen, whose Lynwood firm makes a bedroom set with a roulette wheel headboard and a dresser with oversized dice for handles. “I can go to High Point and spend $269 for a room at the Embassy Suites. Or I can come to Vegas and stay at the Bellagio for $169 a night. What sounds better to you?”
CTC, a Chicago manufacturer of bedding and upholstered seating, is spending nearly $10,000 for its booth in Las Vegas this week. “It’s a test,” said CTC designer Jean Joseph. “This could help us tap into the West Coast audience because not everyone goes to High Point.”
The Phillips Collection was one of the few North Carolina-based companies that made the trek to Las Vegas. Owner Mark Phillips came to the World Market Center with a sampling of his strikingly contemporary artist-designed pieces: a rocking chair and ottoman made from woven seat-belt material, biomorphic rattan lounges and Yuri Zatarain’s ceramics, whose surfaces appear to be sketched in pencil.
Though Phillips is a board member of the International Home Furnishings Center in High Point, he said that the old guard North Carolina furniture establishment had become complacent and that competition would be good for the industry. “Our mandate,” Phillips said, “is to create great products and let the buyer be the winner.”
Merchandise being exhibited this week, however, was often more winsome than winning. With the notable exception of some contemporary accessories showrooms, the World Market Center’s tenants offered collections that could be best described as McMansion Rococo. The wares on display seemed ideal for certain theme hotels on the Strip but out of step with the 21st century architecture sprouting up around the city.
If this market is any indication, Mediterranean and Tuscan baroque, cottage cutesy, Zen Modernism and midcentury regurgitation will be with us for years to come.
The occasional Western and rustic styles offered visual respite with a simple warmth and hand-wrought sincerity. Calling their line “bunkhouse Gucci,” a San Francisco consortium of fashionistas named Ferreira made a world premiere in Las Vegas with a collection of embroidered and bejeweled bedding and table linens in mohair and microsuede designed for second-home hauteur.
Kenshoma’s Keck also produced lush textural pillows and rugs in calming California beach shades that complement her beautifully proportioned, clean-lined furniture made of teak and woven fibers. Mango wood bowls with a tortoiseshell appearance and straw lamps were just as organic as Keck’s signature ceramics in eggshell finishes and botanical patterns.
“Design is a spiritual process,” Keck said while arranging vases in cream, pale pink and green. “I like the idea that one person can make something with their own hands and that can pass into someone else’s hands and make their lives more complete.”
Other Los Angeles-area designers brought a taste of California casual and Hollywood glamour to Las Vegas. Felipe Bautista, a designer for A.P. Smiley & Son, a custom furniture fabrication firm for decorators and film studios, showed tailored Modern pieces as well as Josephine, a carved French period sofa covered in black and white toile that was the essence of Regency Revival.
Architect Clarence Chiang and interior designer Hannah Lee, the husband-wife proprietors of Team HC Workshop, the downtown L.A. studio responsible for the first-phase renovation of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, showed their draftsmanship skills with espresso-stained oak consoles and room dividers. For a lively accent piece, they offered Morph, a pair of C-shaped forms that were lacquered in a citric green that could be used separately as side tables or placed end to end to create a cube table with an eye-catching hole in the middle.
“We haven’t taken any orders, but there has been a lot of interest so far,” Chiang said on Day 2 of the event. “It is our first show, and so close to home, it seemed like a worthwhile investment.”
Other designers, however, weren’t so sure.
“When I walked in and saw all the ‘Dynasty’ furniture around our booth, I wondered if we were in the right place,” said Celeste Lee of Bungalow 5, a hip New York City collection of low-cost Asian tables and chairs with Modern lines. “It’s too soon to tell, but if they remain committed to style and substance, this will probably be a very successful show within three to five years.”
Times staff writer David A. Keeps can be reached at david.keeps@latimes.com.
