San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Home is a showroom
Boutique also a residence, gallery
David Alhadeff had a literary reference in mind when he expanded his The Future Perfect design boutique in San Francisco.
“I thought, maybe this can be like Mrs. Madrigal’s place in (Armistead Maupin’s) ‘Tales of the City,’ ” he says. Alhadeff joined his gallery with an adjacent storefront and the apartment above it; a large courtyard, with a winding wood staircase, ties the spaces together. The Pacific Heights location is a contemporary design compound.
He calls it The Complex. And in the same way Mrs. Madrigal presided over the enchanting apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Alhadeff oversees the galleries and resides part time in the upstairs apartment—which TFP customers can view by appointment — with his husband, Jason Duzansky, photographer Steven Meisel’s former art director. The couple also live part time in New York, The Future Perfect’s original location. There is also one in Los Angeles, where Alhadeff recently transformed Elvis Presley’s former Beverly Hills estate into Casa Perfect, which is also a residence-as-retail.
Perhaps what conjures a Mrs. Madrigal kind of experience more than anything else are the compound’s Victorian-style buildings and the way visitors instinctively wander from the street-level galleries to the courtyard to Alhadeff and Duzansky’s apartment. “We live with the work,” says Alhadeff. “It continues from the gallery into our personal space so people can go into the apartment and shop the pieces there.” The Complex also works a lot like the way one moves about San Francisco: Only a little rambling leads you from one neighborhood to another, and each turf will have a completely different vibe.
For Alhadeff, the best part of San Francisco is its connection to nature. He and Duzansky regularly lose themselves in the redwoods near Muir Woods or at Stinson Beach. There’s also the food. “We can’t talk about San Francisco and not discuss food,” says Alhadeff, who counts Cala, the Progress, Central Kitchen and Cotogna on his regular restaurant rotation. And on a Saturday, he and Duzansky also love going to Rainbow Grocery. “The produce here is the most luscious thing I’ve ever seen.”
When Alhadeff and Duzansky are at home in their apartment, it’s a quiet experience, one that involves cooking together and Netflix consumption. Slow mornings are also standard practice. “We’re into the Blue Bottle craze and so we make coffee with our French press and sit and read the newspaper,” Alhadeff says.
Their home life is typical, but the design that surrounds them at home is as vibrant and varied as the Bay Area landscape.
In the dining area, a sculptural pendant, made with layers of banana fibers, hangs above a raw oak table and chairs designed by Pinch, a U.K.-based design studio that specializes in powerful, simple forms and materials. The bedroom displays more furniture by Pinch as well as a brass chandelier with a silhouette inspired by a cherry blossom branch, designed by Bay Area designer Charles de Lisle. And in the living area, walls are covered with Calico Wallpaper organic linen, dyed with minerals that mimic colors found in the Pacific Ocean.
Compared to a traditional shopping trip, a tour of the apartment is an adventure that’s as voyeuristic as it is practical. Discovering wrinkles in the bright white linens on the upholstered bed, or spotting an oak dining chair that’s askew or finding an imprint in the silvery velvet-wrapped cushion on the Pinch-designed armchair — it’s evidence that Alhadeff and Duzansky live here, even when they are not in.
Seeing the pieces in situ also ignites imagination. The way Alhadeff and Duzansky have placed furnishings in a personal way lets viewers visualize unexpected arrangements or different ways they might organize pieces for themselves. A dresser made of white oiled oak bookends the table in the dining room, where there’s also an armchair upholstered with a botanical print that punctuates the oak furniture. In the living area, a Jesmonite drum table, designed by Pinch, has a white and charcoal ombre effect that mimics the bluegreen ombre of the Calico Wallpaper linen.
While Alhadeff established The Future Perfect in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, these days he finds that the San Francisco location, which opened in 2013, informs his business in New York and Los Angeles. “We work with a global community of creative people,” he says. “And I like to think San Francisco is the gateway for our entire program. People here are hiring the world’s best architects and designers. We have so many New York clients that come into the San Francisco gallery and say, ‘I know you from New York but I never have time to visit.’ In San Francisco, they have a moment to breathe and check us out.”
“I want people to have a childlike sense of discovery here,” Alhadeff says. And maybe that sense of discovery is like the wonder Alhadeff experiences when he’s in San Francisco itself. “After we’ve been in New York for a while, things there start to look shades of gray,” he says. “When we escape to San Francisco, everything is Technicolor.”