Kelly Wearstler

Kelly Wearstler is a highly influential American designer whose career reshaped contemporary interiors by rejecting restraint in favor of bold, expressive design. Trained in graphic design at the Massachusetts College of Art, she brought a strong sense of composition and visual storytelling into three-dimensional space, a skill that became central to her work. She rose to prominence in the 1990s through her transformative hotel projects—most notably the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills—which helped define the boutique hotel movement and introduced a new kind of moody, glamorous, personality-driven luxury. Wearstler is known for blending California ease with European and Hollywood influences, freely mixing mid-century modernism, brutalist forms, natural materials, and high-gloss finishes to create intentional tension and energy. Beyond interiors, she has built a wide-ranging design empire that includes furniture, lighting, textiles, and sculptural objects inspired by art, architecture, and organic forms. By embracing maximalism, contrast, and imperfection at a time when minimalism dominated, Wearstler not only developed a distinctive aesthetic but also influenced a generation of designers to value intuition, risk-taking, and emotional impact over strict design rules.