Paul Smith’s Hot Pink Los Angeles Store Just Got a Modernist Makeover
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When British fashion designer Paul Smith sat down to ponder a redesign of his label’s Los Angeles store, there was one nonnegotiable: “We’re not daring to change the exterior,” he tells ELLE DECOR. “It’s too iconic and well known.”
The facade he’s referencing is drenched in a bright, bubblegum hue—an instant standout on Melrose Avenue, and one of the bustling shopping corridor’s more Instagrammable moments. What Smith did tweak in the renovation was a handful of interior elements, marking the brick-and-mortar outpost’s first major update since its opening in 2005.
The store’s famed pink exterior was inspired by Mexican architect Luis Barragán, whose home and ranches Smith once visited in Mexico City. Its new interiors, meanwhile, draw from Charles and Ray Eames’s Case Study House #8 in Los Angeles. That midcentury-modern aesthetic continues in the furnishings, which include chairs by Mario Bellini and others from the 1960s and ’70s—many upholstered in Paul Smith’s fabrics for Maharam.
One of the most significant additions to the reworked space is a VIP area with a separate, private rear entrance, catering primarily to the city’s many film and TV stars. Other notable upgrades include a glossy red tunnel at the entrance (another modernist flourish inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s low-slung entryways), which comes complete with a mosaic floor.
While a luxe, exclusive feeling was a priority, a sense of, as Smith puts it, “effort,” was too. “Many beautiful stores around the world are fantastic, but their pieces are just expensive pieces,” he says. “I like to do things that have a bit more quirkiness and effort.”
That one-of-a-kindness is most notable in objects like a table made of nearly 12,000 dice, which takes cues from Superstudio’s famed Grid tables from the ’70s.
So while the building’s bones remain the same, the additions feel modern, elevated, and—in the case of the VIP area—bespoke and private. “The original design is good, but this one is a lot more sophisticated,” Smith adds. “It has more references to the worlds that I love.”
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