L.A., a place for top tastemakers
Christmas came early this week for design devotees and architectural aficionados waiting to see who would be named to Architectural Digest’s AD100 for 2019, a list recognizing 100 top talents worldwide in the field of design, deemed the “best of the best” by the editorial staff at the style-setting magazine.
On Wednesday, the print and online publication, founded in Los Angeles and now based in New York, revealed the names of the design and architectural firms honored. It included 16 tastemakers from Southern California, up from nine selected in 2018 and seven in 2017. “We spotlight people we are excited about, people who have cultural impact, up-and-comers,” said Amy Astley, editor in chief of Architectural Digest. “It’s a mix of architects, interior designers and a few landscape designers.”
Astley admitted it was not easy editing the global list to 100.
“We agonize over it,” she said, “We have lots of meetings all year, and we keep lists … everything is deeply considered.”
Ultimately, Astley said the team aspires to shine a light on what they believe will be the most important names in the year ahead.
Parsing established stars from fresh-faced newbies is tricky.
“We can’t just have it be a list of the same people since 1990,” when the AD100 was first published, Astley said. “We have to include both legends in the field and also bring in rising stars and new names.”
This year, the AD100 named 14 first-time firms to the list, half of them helmed by female founders, and four of them from California: Brigette Romanek, Jamie Bush + Co. and Studio Shamshiri, all based in Los Angeles, and Charles De Lisle from Sausalito.
“We generally look for people who have been published in the magazine,” Astley said. “Occasionally, there’s an exception, but for the most part we feel that their work should be featured in the magazine.”
With a hefty 16% representation on 2019’s AD100, the design world in Los Angeles is deserving of a victory dance in the end zone. If designers did that sort of thing.
“California is a hotbed of talent,” Astley said, “When you think of California design now, you think of indoor-outdoor, you think of houses that let in the sun … the talent coming out of L.A. is amazing.”