Profile Kelly Wearstler

Kelly Wearstler is renowned for her signature blend of luxurious maximalism with contemporary refinement, but it’s her ability to consistently deliver this approach that’s earned her vanguard status.

For designer Kelly Wearstler, more is more in life and work. Constantly seeking to broaden her mind and evolve her practice, she runs at a high creative frequency, an aptitude that has generated three decades of work and an in-demand Los Angelesbased studio. Today, she’s synonymous with Californian style and she credits her affinity for design to her mother, also a designer, who she accompanied to antique shows and auctions throughout her childhood in South Carolina.

After graduating from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Wearstler interned at Cambridge Seven Associates, also in Boston, followed by Milton Glaser in New York. She then relocated to the West Coast where she worked as a hostess at a Beverly Hills restaurant while launching her own design business from her apartment. “Interior design naturally became my way of weaving together everything I love – architecture, design, fashion, art history, sculpture, texture, light and movement,” she says. Her big break, so to speak, came in 1995 when a client referred to her by a friend engaged her to design a single room.

Three decades later and Wearstler has a multidisciplinary team of 50 working across interior design, architecture, industrial design, curation and creative direction. She is the current doyenne of contemporary American design with a presence straddling interiors, art and fashion, and an online audience encompassing more than 2.2 million Instagram followers and an additional 175,000 across YouTube and TikTok combined (a profile no doubt buoyed by her stint as a judge on the reality television show Top Design in the late 2000s).

“Interior design naturally became my way of weaving together everything I love – architecture, design, fashion, art history, sculpture, texture, light and movement,” she says.

An online audience isn’t necessarily a virtuous metric for success, but Wearstler has the work to back it up. While her residential client list includes Gwen Stefani and Cameron Diaz, she has created countless retail and hospitality spaces, many of which became design destinations unto themselves, such as Ulla Johnson’s West Hollywood flagship and the Santa Monica Proper Hotel. “I’m incredibly proud of my career and feel fortunate to have had the chance to collaborate with such inspiring talent and clients,” she says. As well as this, she frequently releases new homewares, has published six design books and spearheaded a MasterClass interior design series. Of the latter, she says it’s given her an opportunity to share her creative process and “connect with a much wider audience than I ever could have imagined”.

The momentum of this constant output seems to invigorate Wearstler, and she applies it to every fibre of her being. She’s a multitasker at heart, a trait that stems from deep-seated ambition, as well as from a desire to be present for her family – husband Brad Korzen, the CEO and co-founder of The Kor Group, and their three sons Oliver, Elliott and Crosby – when the day’s work is done. “I love sharing my passion for design and art with my sons,” she says. “Those moments are so special to me – whether we’re exploring new pieces to bring into our home, visiting galleries or travelling to cities like Venice, Milan and Madrid. It’s a wonderful way to bond and educate their eye.”

“I’m incredibly proud of my career and feel fortunate to have had the chance to collaborate with such inspiring talent and clients,” she says.

Wearstler’s homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu serve as backdrops to family life and canvases for creative exploration. Malibu, where “the waves literally crash beneath the house during high tide,” feels like an ode to Wearstler’s innate freespiritedness. Meanwhile, her family’s primary residence – a sprawling 1920s-era Beverly Hills home that once belonged to the Broccoli family, the creators of the James Bond franchise – is old Hollywood glamour reimagined. “The property’s rich history adds a timeless Hollywood charm that I find endlessly inspiring,” she says. Wearstler added her own touch over two decades, blending the dwelling’s storied architectural heritage with the work of vintage and contemporary artists, designers and makers.

Both homes sit well within her broader portfolio of work; though constantly evolving, in essence, it draws from myriad influences as far reaching as the Bauhaus movement, the work of 20th-century Italian architect Ettore Sottsass and Hollywood Regency with Wearstler’s singular edge. “Juxtaposition is central to my process as a designer and mixology is the key to infusing a sense of soul into a space,” she says. The effect is maximalist, no doubt, and this intriguing multiplicity has come to define her design philosophy.

Wearstler’s homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu serve as backdrops to family life and canvases for creative exploration.

Intuition and gut instinct are central to her process, which typically begins with material-led exploration at her Los Angeles studio. It’s the ultimate seedbed of creativity: a vibrant space housing decades of collected objects and samples from fabric swatches to vintage furniture and fashion items. “A technique I like to use is creating what I call a material tray,” says Wearstler. “Drawing from this collection, I pull together a material mood board, gathering textures, colour palettes and artworks into a central repository to visualise the overall sense of a space.”

This material-forward rationale fuels her many collaborations – from the looped marble pieces she created in partnership with Arca for Art Basel Miami in 2022 to Frequency, her home accessories collection for Danish silverware company Georg Jensen. These six pieces serve as Wearstler’s exploration of stainless steel, exhibiting dramatic folds and smooth surfaces. “I loved the idea of stainless steel as a conductor of energy and frequency and drew upon a narrative of freak hurricanes to encapsulate this coming together of energy and light,” she says.

Intuition and gut instinct are central to her process, which typically begins with material-led exploration at her Los Angeles studio.

Wearstler applies these same detail-oriented principles to her design partnership with Proper Hospitality, a brand of The Kor Group. Her first collaboration with the group came when Korzen, not yet her husband, commissioned her to decorate the model room of the Avalon Beverly Hills in 1999. Since then, she’s overseen the interiors of Proper Hospitality’s properties in Downtown Los Angeles, Austin, San Francisco and Santa Monica. “The unifying thread between each of the Proper Hotels is that they’re all intrinsically tied to their local communities and deeply rooted in the hyper-localised flavour of each city,” she says. Up next is a large-scale development in Lake Tahoe, set to be completed by the end of 2026.

The Santa Monica outpost requires little introduction; it’s played a heavy hand in cementing Proper Hospitality’s reputation as a design-centric brand with an elevated, boutique offering. Inspired by the “natural beauty of the local coastline, which is just a short walk from the hotel,” Wearstler has incorporated beachy tones, natural materials and organic tropes throughout. Radius headboards conjure images of Californian sunsets and sandy, tactile surfaces throughout are supremely inviting. Only Wearstler could make a maritime-inspired concept cool and she’s done it here with trademark vigour.

Despite many consistent through lines in her work, Wearstler’s endless curiosity seems to propel her. “I’m always looking outwards, conceptualising my next project or collaboration.” Perhaps it’s unsurprising then to hear that she’s intrigued by AI and, more specifically, its ability to facilitate innovative, multi-sensory experiences within the realm of design. True to form, she finds comfort in the unknown: her mind and body perennially at the ready for the next tour de force.

“I’m always looking outwards, conceptualising my next project or collaboration.”