Kelly Wearstler - More than a Rock Star

Kelly Wearstler is an American designer who established her own design firm in the mid 1990s, the Kelly Wearstler Interior Design (KWID). Her extensive experience in the hotel industry made her popular in California. The New Yorker coined her as “the presiding grande dame of West Coast interior design”. She was noted for her design in the Avalon Beverly Hills as it changed the look of boutique hotels around the world. Wearstler was also noted for designing the properties of celebrities, such as Gwen Stefani, Cameron Diaz, and Stacey Snider.

Wearstler has also released four books and her first book, Modern Glamour, was named as bestseller by the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

The life and education of Kelly Wearstler

Kelly Wearstler was born in 1967 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was probably her mother who influenced her to have a career in design since her mother was an antique dealer. Wearstler usually accompanied her mother in buying antique items from thrift shops, auctions and flea markets. This, in a way, helped develop Wearstler’s interest in fashion. She then attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, wherein she took classes in Architecture. She also obtained her bachelor’s degree in interior and graphic design.

Dreaming to work in the film industry as a set decorator, Wearstler moved to Los Angeles in her mid-twenties. Fortunately, she worked as a production assistant on “House Sitter” in 1992. She also worked as an assistant art director on “So I Married an Axe Murderer.” With these small roles in the film industry, she then decided to leave the film industry. However, fate is just playful. While working as a hostess in a Beverly Hills restaurant, she was scouted by Marilyn Grabowski, the photography editor of Playboy. Their meeting led to Wearstler being featured as the Playmate of the Month for September under the name Kelly Gallagher. Still unstable, her earnings from playboy was used to pay her student loans and to put up her own interior design business.

Being a successful interior designer, Wearstler established the Kelly Wearstler Interior Design (KWID) in 1991. She then designed the Avalon and the Maison 140 which led to designing Viceroy Hotels and Resorts. Wearstler gave this new chain of boutique hotels an “almost theatrical” Hollywood design. One of her most accomplished works was the Viceroy in Palm Springs (2001).

Home and fashion lines

Wearstler opened her own boutique in July 2007 in Bergdorf Goodman’s home-furnishing department. The following year, she introduced a line of decorative home goods also for Bergdorf Goodman. Also in 2008, she started to work on a line of jewelry, scarves, bags, and belts. In 2009, she was able to design the top suite of the Las Vegas hard Rock Hotel as well as a home for Stacey Snider of Dreamworks.

KWID was able to design rugs for the Rug Company in 2011. This was followed by fine china for Pickard China also at the same year. In Spring of 2011, Wearstler announced her own named fashion line, Kelly Wearstler. Her first fashion collection incorporated patterns and designs seen in her interior design works, wallpapers included.

Weartler’s products and designs were very much successful that they still being sold at Bergdorf Goodman up to this day.

The style of Kelly Wearstler

The works, particularly the interior designs of Kelly Wearstler has been described as romantic in style, that encompasses a touch of both past and future as well as sophistication and wit. Periodically, her works were described as maximalism. Wearstler has been known for bringing “the decorative back to interior design” and mixing modern and historical designs.