Peeking in on the cool neighbors
Just what makes a Hollywood home hip? In this case, it’s all in the eye of author Hostetler, who seems to have a gaggle of Hollywood “insider” friends with big money, big talent and big midcentury modern houses.
She considers them hip, she writes, because they’re people who “create, shape and embody everything that is L.A. style.”
People like Darren Star, who produced “Sex and the City.” And Ryan Murphy, who created “Nip/Tuck.”
Star lives behind glass walls in a 1950s modern home with Calder creme leather sofas, Ed Ruscha art and amenities too numerous to mention.
Murphy’s 1948 manse, with redwood walls, is filled with “perfect period furniture.”
Telecommunications pioneer Regan Silber hired designer Charles Allem to renovate a Bel-Air mansion. Silber now lives beneath a pyramid in a Bondian palace with doors that open after they’ve scanned your fingerprints.
And so it goes, page after page of amazing architecture in lush Los Angeles surroundings, with furniture to match.
Some women mentioned are types we might not otherwise get a glimpse of: Music and club entrepreneur Amanda Scheer Demme, for example, opened her ultra-modern house to photographer Peter Christiansen Valli, who shot her Hans Wegner Danish teak and brass dining table and the leather chairs produced for the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
And Juicy Couture co-creator Pamela Skaist-Levy is photographed in her “bu” (that’s Malibu to you) beach house.
The women seem to share a penchant for Hermes blankets tossed over the arms of sofas. And for converting regular rooms into wardrobes, where their Birkin bags and stiletto heels are cataloged, if not curated.
This book is interesting because it shows and tells brief personal tidbits about people you might never have bothered to wonder about.
-- Bettijane Levine
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