SLS HOTEL, A LUXURY COLLECTION HOTEL 465 South La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif.; 1-310-247-0400.

ROOMS AND RATES The hotel has 297 rooms, including 61suites. Rooms start at $520(Canadian) and suites at $700 .

Two decades after he introduced the world to the boutique hotel, uber-designer Philippe Starck makes a splashy return to hospitality design with this L.A. property. Starck has a history of working with nightlife kingpins-turned hoteliers. In the 1990s, it was Ian Schrager; today, it’s entrepreneur Sam Nazarian, whose SBE group signed the designer to a 15-year contract. Nazarian’s goal was to create a luxury hotel with top-notch nightlife and a party hotel where you could get a shirt pressed in an hour. He calls it SLS for Style, Luxury and Service - the holy trinity of hostelry. This first property in the SLS umbrella has opened in a former Le Méridien hotel, a cumbersome white building on an urban block at the edge of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and central Los Angeles.

LOCATION SLS is equidistant from LAX and Burbank, about 30 minutes from either with-
out traffic. Shopping streets such as West Third and Melrose (and quaint Melrose Place) in West Hollywood, and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, are less than a 20-minute walk away. But no one walks in L.A., so SLS offers a complimentary shuttle for trips within a two-mile radius.

AMBIENCE In typical Starck style, the lobby is a full-fledged fantasy in which wildly over-scaled planters, a six-foot-tall horse lamp and an array of colossal white chandeliers elicit guests to murmur something about Alice in Wonderland. It’s a reference that has followed Starck for years. The warm staff reassures you that at least you’ll have expert guides for your tumble down the rabbit hole.

CLIENTELE Mixed: young creative professionals, corporate types from Audi (who stay here when in town) and nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and tourists from Western Europe and Russia.

DESIGN The hotel boasts 177 different chair styles (including one that glows red) and 20 chandeliers--and it works. Starck’s métier is wonder, and guests respond accordingly, gasping at the decorand exploring the space before committing to a seat. A smart floor plan breaks the narrow lobby into several seating areas with button-tufted leather upholstery and bookshelves organiz-
ed by subject. The intimate spaces mean you can linger without feeling on display. Teak furniture with white canvas cushions and potted greenery turn a covered terrace into a lush outdoor living room. SLS has clearly put big thought into the little things. Conference rooms are named for “famous monkeys” (such as Albert and Gordo, who were flown to space) and the SLS acronym is given irreverent translations on signage, like “sincere little sorry” when the pool is closed.

ROOMS The rooms are steeped in sex appeal, with plentiful smoked glass, moody lighting, a faux-fur throw and a mini- bar organized into Saints (dried fruit and nuts) and Sinners (organic chocolate and an “intimacy kit”). Rooms are 420 square feet and feature D. Porthault sheets, a 40-inch plasma TV, Wi-Fi (which is $16.75 a day) and an iPod docking station. Most have a desk and a banquette and table. Some rooms on the second and fifth floors have private terraces. Suites, which range from a 500-square-foot Studio Suite to the 1,900-square-foot Presidential Suite, have Mac computers, oversized soaking tubs and separate living rooms with Corbusier-style furniture; seven suites have personal gyms. Dozens of rooms and suites offer a view of the Hollywood sign.

SERVICE Luxury-hotel stays plummeted just as SLS opened this winter, and that means plenty of attention for the remaining guests. The staff has an easy camaraderie that suggests they’ve been working together for a decade, and the valet and doormen are as professional as the front-desk team. I ordered twice from the 24-hour in-room dining menu. Both times, the staff member repeated my requests and estimated that it would arrive within 20 minutes--and both times it did. The apricot croissant I had tried at breakfast the day before wasn’t available that morning, so the kitchen included several other flavours, complimentary. When the free hotel shuttle wasn’t available to take me and a friend to dinner, a staff member apologized, hailed us a cab, gave the driver directions and handed me a round-trip taxi voucher.

AMENITIES The 24/7 business centre has several computers and lends laptops and printers, though you must pay for printing and Internet. Modern cardio and weight machines fill a better-than-average gym and a personal trainer is available on request. The Ciel Spa, which opened in January, also offers poolside and in-room massage; the therapist brings an iPod loaded with soothing music.

FOOD AND DRINK At night, guests and film types converge at The Bazaar, a theatrical collection of dining rooms and bars on the ground floor. The menu, by celebrated Spanish chef José Andrés (a protégé of Ferran Adria), is as diverse and creative as Starck’s surrealistic decor. It’s divided into Rojo and Blanca, the former showcasing traditional Spanish jamon y queso, the latter a stage for inventive small plates. The restaurant has complementary traditional and modern dining areas. Bar Centro, which is lively within moments of its 6 p.m. opening time, serves signature Andrés cocktails such as the Magic Mojito, in which liquid is poured onto a cloud of cotton candy (voila: mojito!). The rest of the floor is split between Patisserie, where diners enjoy house-made sweets at communal tables, and a spin-off boutique of Moss, the Manhattan emporium of high design.

THINGS TO DO Being in the SBE network has its perks. The concierge can book reservations at XIV, chef Michael Mina’s terrific new Starck-designed restaurant, or get preferred access to the nightlife venues that made Nazarian a household name in L.A., such as Hyde Lounge and The Abbey. On sunny days, you’ll be hard-pressed to do anything but kick back in a private cabana at the stunning rooftop pool. Each tent has loungey furniture, a plasma-screen TV, phone, Wi-Fi and food and beverage service.

TOP DRAWS In a city where buying a quart of milk demands a commute, guests need only take an elevator to have a top-notch evening.

NEEDS WORK The moody (read: dark) lighting and abundant mirrors can make a jet-lagged guest feel out-of-sorts.

BOTTOM LINE Unapologetic glamour and enticing dining converge for a sexy all-in-one urban getaway. The author was a guest of the hotel.

Brad Ford of Brad Ford Interior Design and blog Design Therapy

Occasionally, Amanda Nisbet makes a client gasp. “They’ll see a color they think is yucky or scary, like pea green or acid yellow,” she explains. “But then I’ll show them the whole scheme and they’ll say ‘Oooh...now I get it.’”

And there’s no better argument for Nisbet’s bent for high-punch color than her Upper East Side pad, where walls are slicked in high-gloss pea green and contemporary art comes in hues like lemon yellow and cobalt. Tempering the pop palette is a traditional decorating vernacular in which marble-top consoles, voluminous silk curtains and the occasional Klismos chair meet. “It’s not your parents’ home, but it’s not such a diversion that you don’t feel comfortable,” she explains. “I bring a little spunk and freshness to tradition.”

Not that this is her first brush with drama. A decade ago, Nisbet was an actress. “I was going to all these auditions but not becoming the fabulous movie star I wanted to be in a short time,” she says. She soon realized that her callbacks were for her side gig, decorating, not acting—not surprising when you learn that her grandmother, mother and sister are in the business of making homes beautiful, too.

Performances aside, Nisbet is enjoying a 10-year run that started with her first client, comedian Caroline Rhea, and has continued with interiors she’s concocted for aficianados like O magazine publisher Jill Seelig. She may have changed stages, but the applause and rave reviews followed her to her current role.
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In the dining room, warm Venetian plaster walls dial up the gilt frame of her grandmother’s portrait and the tole palm trees beneath it. The pair of girandoles, which belonged to her grandmother, “intensify the glamour and sparkle, which is so important to a dinner party.”

Nisbet arranged a study in blue—a print by James Nares, a sculpture by Mary Chatham and original Josiah Wedgwood pieces dating to the 1750s, which she purchased at Gerald Bland Antiques.

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Thoreau had it right when he said, “Simplify, simplify.” It’s the mantra interior designers Joan and Jayne Michaels, the identical twins behind the firm 2Michaels, follow rigorously. But don’t confuse their métier with minimalism. There’s no lack of stimulation at Jayne’s Sutton Place apartment. With evocative modern artwork—both Federico Vegas and Sam Samore are friends—and exemplary mid-century furniture by Carlo Mollino and Franco Albini, each glance reveals a cache. Let’s face it, the lanky designers themselves could pass for Modigliani muses.

In their late teens, the California natives studied and modeled in Italy, where they were introduced to furniture by Franco Albini and his Neo-Rationalist cohorts. “Their work is so minimal and so refined,” says Jayne. “But there’s always this sensual element.” The same balance is true in the Michaels’ interiors.

Three years ago, the pair teamed up with noted dealer (and Joan’s significant other) Larry Weinberg, to form the showroom 4PM, which sells vintage modern furniture that supplies A-list clients’ homes—and often their own. “Larry doesn’t get attached to things, but I do,” says Joan, citing her Albini chair, one of her first major purchases. “I’ll never sell it.” Even ascetics are entitled to hoard now and again.
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Jayne (left) and Joan Michaels confab at Jayne’s Sutton Place pad. Jayne collects ceramics and pottery, mostly Scandinavian pieces from the ’40s and ’50s. “I love their simplicity and timelessness,” says Jayne. “Some look like ancient Chinese vessels, yet they’re modern.”

Much of the art in Jayne Michaels’ house dates from the mid-century, but the library strikes a more contemporary note. The large photograph is by Sam Samore and the sculpture of a doll, “Little Black Dress,” is by Keith Edmier. The green-and-white chair is by Gio Ponti.

Standing sentry at the living room entrance is a Gio Ponti table, c. 1949, and a 1973 painting by Claude Aliotti, which satisfies Jayne’s love of abstracts and landscapes. The brass candleholders are likely from an artist at Cranbrook, the Michigan art academy that was integral to America’s modernism movement.

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Brad Ford was ten years old when he decorated for the first time. "I chose an overscaled wallpaper with leather belts woven to look like plaid," Ford recalls of his childhood bedroom. "And the belt buckles were metallic gold paper which matched my new brass furniture. I 'd spend hours just rearranging three pieces of furniture in this little box."

The Chelsea-based interior designer abandoned the funkadelic streak in the 70's but his ability to give a few pieces of furniture major impact has endured. Ford makes small spaces sing, which made him the go-to designer for a cadre of creative, young up-and-comers. His one-bedroom contains just a handful of furnishings: mid-century chairs, a contemporary sofa, and a coffee table that’s essentially a slice of an ancient tree, which indulges Ford's need for both nature and texture.

“If everything you pick is beautiful to its core, you don't need a lot of stuff to make a room visually interesting,” he says. Ford's specialty is infusing a house with a deep serenity, but one that won’t lull you to sleep. Just have a seat in his Poul Kjaerholm chairs and you'll see what he means.

But Ford doesn't take his aesthetic too seriously--neither on his blog Design Therapy, nor in his own living space. His bathroom is dipped in chic black chalkboard paint and inscribed with hand-drawn chalk illustrations; he once scored major publicity for encrusting a show house room with petrified bugs. Turns out the metallic wallpaper wasn't so far-fetched after all.
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Ford revels in mixing downright highbrow furnishings with mass-market finds. The living room holds Poul Kjaerholm chairs, a Noguchi lamp, and a coffee table by French artist Jerome Abel Seguin, but on the wall, a series of Ikea boxes is mounted to mimic the work of Donald Judd—and provide discreet storage, Ford says. The designer’s blog, Design Therapy, chronicles design from a similarly democratic viewpoint.

The Arkansas native is hugely influenced by nature. His bedroom has an earthy palette that complements a collection of pottery. “Organic shapes, rough-hewn wood, a patina finish—those are the things that bring texture and character in a space,” he says.

The mounted impala was a gift from Ford’s mother. “I mentioned to her once briefly that I loved taxidermy,” he recalls. “And there I was at Christmas, opening this big box.”

“¡Que linda!” In Buenos Aires, it’s the Spanish I-level pleasantry that I utter more than even “hello” and “thank you”—even if it’s to myself. That’s because this cosmopolitan city is not just “pretty,” it’s a visual feast: taxis are adorned with painted curlicues, a public-works building dubbed the Water Palace is clad in 300,000 faience bricks (by Royal Doulton) and the seat of power is a rose-hued mansion called the Pink House. Those historic edifices earned this city its “Paris of the Pampas” moniker, but they had been solely a pretty backdrop to the traveler seeking tango or steak or dollar-to-peso deals on both. For the aesthetically minded, though, that European grandeur is a gleaming gold frame on a vibrant contemporary art and design scene that is poised
to become the city’s next calling card.

My most recent trip overlapped with the Argentine capital’s yearly cultural apex, ArteBA, a week-long contemporary arts fair that draws nearly 150,000 visitors and calls itself the largest cultural event in Latin America. At night I tagged alongside collectors, curators and gallerists to the fair (open till 10pm), late-night dinners and even later parties. But by day I hit the cobblestones in search of the finest home furnishings in town.

Traveling to Buenos Aires reentered the vogue in 2002 after an economic crash crippled the peso from a first-world exchange rate to third. The city has recovered somewhat since then (it’s now $3.45AR to $1USD), but its identity was shaken. The crash had another effect: artists and designers who had previously sought outside inspiration and resources started looking closer to home. For Hernán Salamanco, that meant reusing the town’s ubiquitous metal For Sale signs as canvas for his abstract paintings, which are now shown at the blue-chip Braga Menendez gallery. It also prompted BA’s biggest home-furnishings success story, Airedelsur, a line of tabletop and accessories sold at Saks Fifth Avenue, Robb & Stucky and soon Barneys New York. Founder Marcelo Lucini hung up his suit in 2001 to explore his native country for business ideas. The result is finely crafted accessories made with local materials, such as horn, leather, wood and alpaca silver, by indigenous families in northwest Argentina.

Lucini also recently opened a boutique in Recoleta, a cosmopolitan neighborhood that’s home to luxury shops, an enchanting cemetery and the classic Alvear Palace Hotel, which serves a first-rate tea on a custom-made Limoge pattern with gold-and-aqua trim. Although the area is teeming with leather-goods shops, a design-minded shopper is better off elsewhere. Historic San Telmo is a treasure trove of antiques with an enthralling outdoor flea market every Sunday, but for quirky boutiques and only-in-Argentina finds, head to Palermo.

Vintage gloves at the Galeria de la Defensa, an 1880s house filled with quirky vendors

Entering Palemo Hollywood

The thoroughfare Godoy Cruz, which hugs the train tracks that split twin neighborhoods Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood (named for their shop and film studio concentrations, respectively), is a gold mine. There, Argentina Elementos sells fine wool and vicuna rugs and home accessories made by hand in Argentina. (For 850 pesos I picked up an 8-by-10-foot Greek key rug with natural white and black sheep yarn.) Graciela Churba offers modern rug designs that can be customized to match a Pantone swatch. At Net Furniture, goatskin and indigenous woods such as Lapacho make handsome woven seats and stools, and giant cedar-veneer pendant lights evoke tropical forests. A few blocks down, Lauro O., run by one of the country’s preeminent interior designers, sells furniture sheathed in pale linen slipcovers. La Pasionaria jumbles wares from the 1920s to 1950s in a hangar. Its 1930s-era hotel china was mesmerizing and could fit in a suitcase (especially when protected by a rug).

Deeper into Palermo Soho, Arte Ètnico Argentino is a trove of gallery-worthy handwoven textiles and rough-hewn chairs. A pretty old butcher’s shop nearby is home to Bacano, one of the few spots selling locally made furnishings side by side with fine art, including paintings by Juan Torcoletti, a Buenos Aires-born artist who works in New York. If this May finds you in BA, you’ll see Torcoletti holding court at Bacano’s ArteBA stand in La Rural.

Despite a swarm of collectors from the UK, Russia and the States, the annual fair doesn’t yet draw the crowds that Art Basel or its Miami counterpart does, but nor does ArteBA suffer its flaws. Here, you don’t have to be a boldface name to get attention from a gallery principal, poke your head inside storage closets jammed with yet-unseen paintings, or make a stunning purchase (at 10 pm)and still have funds to ship it home. That is a thing of beauty. ¡Que linda!—indeed.

La Pasionaria, a warehouse of 1920's-1960s goods

PLANNING
The most popular times to head to Argentina are during the southern hemisphere’s spring (September-November) and summer (December-February). ArteBA 2009 is May 22-26.

GETTING THERE
LAN delivers daily, nonstop business class service from JFK to Buenos Aire’s EZE via Santiago.

SHOPS, GALLERIES and MUSEUMS
Airedelsur, Galería Promenade Alvear, Av. Alvear 1883, 54-11/4802-6100
Argentina Elementos, El Salvador 4817, Palermo Soho, 54-11/4832-6971
Arte Ètnico Argentino, El Salvador 4656, 54-11/4832-0516
Bacano, Armenia 1544, 54-11/4831-3564
Braga Menedez Atre Contemporáneo, Humboldt 1574, 54-11/4775-5577
Cualquier Verdura, Humberto 517, 54-11/4300-2474
Elementos Argentinos, Godoy Cruz 1720, 54-11/4832-6299
Galeria de la Defensa, Defensa 1179, (no phone)
Graciela Churba, Godoy Cruz 1774, 54-11/4834-6992
La Pasionaria, Godoy Cruz 1541, 54-11/4773-0563
Laura O., Godoy Cruz 1575, 54-11/4776-8899
Net Furniture, Godoy Cruz 1740, 54-11/4833-3901
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Ave. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, 54-11/4808-6500
Papelera Palermo, Honduras 4945, 54-11/4833-3081

DESIGN-CENTRIC HOTELS
Alvear Palace Hotel, Ave. Alvear 1891, 54-11/4808-2100
Faena Hotel + Universe, Martha Salotti 445, 54-11/4010-9000
Home Hotel, Honduras 5860, 54-11/4778-1008
Park Hyatt Buenos Aires, Ave. Alvear 1661, 54-11/5171-1234
Ultra Hotel Buenos Aires, Gorriri 4929, 54-11/4833-9200

Had the two a chance to meet, decorator Victoria Klein and wit Dorothy Parker would have got on like sugar and cinnamon. When Parker would quip, “Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour,” Klein would retort: why discriminate?

Recently, the decorator delivered a generous portion of both to the house of a young family who live just a hop-skip from her Pelham home. For the Marras, a bit of dazzle was just what the buttoned-up 1920s Colonial needed to shake things up.

While peeling away traditional elements, Klein helped homeowner Erin Marra excavate a bit of her inner style, too. One glance at the graceful entryway with shimmering oyster-colored walls, silver Art Deco chairs, and silk-shaded chandeliers and “mom of three” doesn’t spring to mind. Lana Turner, maybe. “Most of the time I’m in jeans and t-shirts,” says Marra, whose boys are aged nine, six, and one. “If you saw me on a daily basis, you wouldn’t think, wow, she’s so glamorous.” But many would argue that dressing your home in glass chandeliers and glitzy fabrics takes more a commitment to glamour than the occasional blow-out and ball gown.

“I felt like what I needed in my life and family was beauty,” says Marra. “But nothing over the top--we stopped just short of that.” You’d think they toed the line if you consulted the list of furnishings alone (Go to Resources to see what I mean). In less capable hands, iridescent fabrics, opalescent lamps, and lame throw pillows would read ‘Barbie Dream House’ not ‘glam family.’ But the home’s generous proportions and traditional bones soaked up the glitz; there’s a Bagues-style crystal overhead fixture in the butler’s pantry and it’s not at all out of place.

Klein teased out moments of grandeur in unlikely spots. The family room, suited for rough-and-tumble kids, has rock-crystal cabinet pulls. “Victoria’s very creative,” says Marra. “I would show her photographs of fixtures by Josef Hoffman and say, ‘the repros are too expensive, but I love these,’ and she’d find someone to make something just like it. With her it’s always, ‘why couldn’t we do that!’ and ‘sure, why not!’.

The front of the house also says ‘yes’ to sparkle. The stunning silver-wallpapered dining room is crowned with a waterfall chandelier of glass orbs and windows are swathed in elegant folds of transparent, featherweight wool, one of several swanky Gretchen Bellinger fabrics in the house. “It swoops and falls like a Grecian dress,” says Klein. She ought to know--she was once a dressmaker. The effect is like intentionally goddess-like, like a modern-day Hera minding her brood, Marra is the home’s sole female; she’s outnumbered 4 to 1.

Arch femininity was hardly the m.o. when the family moved in three years ago. Then, the gracious Colonial was outfitted with the traditional furniture bought for their former home, a farmhouse in Bedford. “When I first started thinking of decorating, I was thinking of other peoples’ homes, pictures in magazines, and colors like coffee and red,” Marra explains. “I took the summer off to regroup and when I came back I knew we needed to use the colors that I love and ones that I wear.”

Cue pink, purple, and metallics. In the living room, a pair of deep, George Smith sofas are covered in strie silvery grey velvet. There, the family reads, plays games, and kick up their feet on ottoman equivalent of a Chanel jacket--an oversize tailored footstool in a tweedy pink woven with Lucite legs. Nearby, diminutive chairs are covered in a brazen pink and purple stripe, and the two Chinese Art Deco carpets have hues like lavender, raspberry and peach. How did Marra’s husband respond to the color palette? “He asked for more!” says Klein. Specifically he wanted two hot-pink chairs, but Marra talked him down and they settled on the stripe. “JP is a pearl among men,” says Klein.

In the entry hall and stair landing, the curtain fabric reads just a twinge iridescent. Four black-and-white vintage portraits of a dancer in a billowing Grecian dress perfectly mimics the folds of the dining room curtains. The walls are glazed in a shimming neutral that had handfuls of glitter thrown in--a last-minute idea from Marra who was getting used to the idea of glitz. “When my mother first came to the house and saw the glitter in the paint, she turned to me and said, ‘You always were a glitter girl.’”

Photographs by Ellen McDermott

Problem
Uneven, bumpy walls.

Solution
I'm a proselytizer for Benjamin Moore, the cheapest, fastest way to transform a room. So imagine my surprise when even the elegant #2129-40 couldn't disguise my cruddy living-room walls. The paint was flat; the surface was not. I enlisted Brad Ford, interior designer and founder of the blog Design Therapy, to mask the trouble spots without damaging the apartment. Ford's usual clients are high-end, but he gamely suggested a budget-friendly plan for me: a salon-style grouping of art, hung with fishing wire from a single rail.

As the daughter, sister and best friend of artists, I have a veritable gallery of framed art, but Ford thought my collection was too "grandmothery" to make a singular statement. Instead, we fitted those frames with primary-color construction paper, and bought others (Brownstone Treasures, 220 Court St between Baltic and Warren Sts, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn; 718-237-1838, brownstonetreasures.com) to fill with vivid oak tag. "The variety of frames gives it charm, and the paper palette makes it consistent," he said. Using fishing wire, we connected each artwork to a clip, then hung the clips over a rail , meaning I'll be able to change the layout and the art itself. "Honestly, if we had more frames, we would have hung them," Ford said. Sure, come back anytime—I've got three more walls.

Sometimes a career—even a creative one—can expose the paradoxes within us. There are introverted comedians, chefs who order dinner at fast-food joints and fashion designers who churn out dazzling Technicolor confections on the runway but retreat to austere white homes in order to escape the fatigue of Pantone color swatches swirling around in their heads.

Amy Smilovic, founder of the women's clothing label Tibi, doesn't embody such a contradiction. The Greenwich home she shares with her husband and two small children is yet another flag heralding the Tibi mantra of color and pattern—a mantra likewise heralded by fashionistas such as Scarlett Johansson and Kylie Minogue, as well.

Smilovic didn't unleash her vibrant, notice-me patterns on moving day; in fact, until recently, her family assumed the previous homeowners' very different, very Pierre Deux vision. "For seven years I lived with these rooster curtains," recalls Smilovic. That is, until Bruce Shostak, a colleague of a friend, came and ripped them down. "As soon as I did it," says the Manhattan-based decorator, "the room felt fresher, lighter and more in line with what Amy wanted." His bold gesture turned into a call to action for Smilovic, who "thought you had to have everything planned out" before embarking on a renovation project.

And she practically did. As with her twice-yearly fashion collections, Smilovic created mood boards for each room, pairing magazine tear sheets with fabric memos from New York City's Decoration & Design Building. The kitchen was inspired by the label Marni, the bedroom by Chloé. "Amy had the talent and vision to do it herself, but she also had a family and a full-time job," Shostak says. So, with Smilovic's vision and Shostak's know-how, the duo swept every bit of stodginess from the 1962 Colonial-style house, all the while adhering to the lightning-fast fashion-industry calendar: The first wall came down after spring Fashion Week and the project wrapped up just two weeks prior to the fall shows.

Fashion fueled the concept for many areas of the home, but the living room, an addition with low ceilings and little architectural detail, stumped Smilovic. While she had previously ruled out curtains, they became the surprise unsung hero, the decorative element that actually ended up saving the day. Shostak hung them from floor to ceiling, tricking the eye into seeing an elongated, vertical space. The two settled on a swatch of yellow silk from a home furnishings fabric house, but the fashion designer knew that Tibi's overseas mills could replicate it for a fraction of the price. "The first sample came back as sickly neon," Shostak says with a laugh. A second try yielded much better, very chic results.

That silk was one of the dozens of items custom made for the project. The upholstery on white-painted straight-back dining chairs is a Tibi dress fabric printed on heavier cloth. Rugs were designed and fabricated by Tibi and are now offered as a service to the brand's clients, as well. And when Smilovic fancied a psychedelic patterned wallpaper, she set out to make it herself. A colleague connected her with Flavor Paper, the New Orleans wallpaper firm famous for their vibrant, riotous designs. The company, which was so smitten with her renderings, signed Smilovic for an entire licensed collection.

The fact that the swirling black-and-white pattern ended up in the bedroom underscores how dedicated Smilovic is to her aesthetic. This is a room that most people describe as a sanctuary, retreat, or getaway. It's often the last room homeowners paint, and they often leave it white, cloud-like. Not Smilovic. She plastered one wall, floor to high-pitched ceiling, with the bold pattern. (A compromise with her husband; she would have papered the whole room.) "I'm really comfortable with what the Tibi aesthetic is," she says. "The house helps me constantly validate who I am and what I'm designing. Of every look I do, I ask, 'Would the person wearing this dress look OK in my house, in my office, in store in SoHo?' And if not, it has no business being in the collection."

Both Shostak and Smilovic learned much from their collaboration and each other's viewpoints. "Amy chose this because she loves it," says Shostak of the former advertising executive. "So she takes it home with her." After working with the decorator, Smilovic has a new outlook that informs her décor. Experiment, she advises, and flout convention when the mood strikes. "I used to think, 'Don't you have to use upholstery fabric?' But if you find a great scarf, just make it a pillow."