Heart and Soul
The classic French Mediterranean-style house where fashion designer Libbie Lane settled four years ago could have gone grand in the wrong hands. Instead, it is a warm, surprising place, alive with color, texture and the personality of its owner, who creates glamorous, exquisitely detailed clothes for her eponymous label. “Someone called my clothes soulful,” Lane says. “If there’s anything I’m proud of in my life, it’s that I’m a soulful person. I love that that comes through in my work. And this is a great house, because it’s got soul.”
Is the decor Italian, Asian, Latin, French, Indian? All of the above. One of the hallmarks of Lane’s fashion look has been the artful and adventurous mixing of separates. So it would be out of character for her to create “the Tuscan room,” or any space composed of pieces of the same color, pattern, period or style. Nina Quaranta, head of the L.A. chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and a faithful Libbie Lane fan, says, “When I wear her clothes, she’ll guide me putting pieces together and I’ll say, ‘Really? Are you sure I can wear that with that?’ Then I’ll go out in the combination she suggested, and people will be falling all over me.”
Lane would seem completely out of place in a minimalist room. She convincingly employs an Indian sari as a tablecloth in her dining room, hard by an old Brazilian altar masquerading as a side table. “I think it’s unnatural to decorate a house in all one style. That would be as bad as wearing all black,” she says. “If a piece of art or furniture is a great piece, then it’s a great piece. It will be wonderful wherever in the house it is. As a little girl, my favorite thing was rearranging the furniture in my room. My philosophy at home is to just surround myself with pieces I love, and move them around when I feel like it.”
That’s exactly how many of the women who collect Lane’s clothes enjoy them. “I rarely wear a Libbie top with a Libbie bottom,” says filmmaker Vivien Lesnik Weisman. “I like separates that can be moved around and combined in different ways. Her clothes work so well with those of other designers, especially to create the sort of new bohemian style that’s popular now. When I mix her pieces, I don’t even give Libbie credit. I feel that I’ve created the look.”
Lane endorses such an approach. “Every human being is unique. So why would you want to look like everyone else? I never wear a suit, or something that matches. The energy that I get from mixing different elements together is almost spiritual.”
Before she began designing clothes, Lane was a painter. Her works are everywhere in the house. Brilliant landscapes and witty still lifes hang on walls painted shades that Lane mixed herself. The entry is the color of coffee with a little milk added, the dining room a deep terra-cotta. The living room walls are a ripe plum.
Until late in 1997, Lane sold her line by appointment from the Beverly Hills house. With fashion having been dominated by black for so long, “the first thing that everyone noticed about Libbie’s clothes were the gorgeous colors,” says Danae Webster, vice president of Libbie Lane, Inc. “People loved coming to the house with all its color.” The mood was set there, then transferred to a cozy cottage on Burton Way that became the permanent home for Lane’s collection.
Lane shares the house with her husband, Andrew, 6-year-old son Alec and 2-year-old daughter Ella. “My house is feminine, but not overtly so,” Lane says, “and the clothes are the same way. They’re feminine because they’re colorful, but you’ll never see a ruffle or a bow.” The designer wears her dark hair long and has a weakness for high-heeled mules. But her femininity is expressed in more subtle ways. She’s the kind of woman who considers candles and flowers among the necessities of life; it is almost a misnomer to call them accessories.
“Accessories at home are super important, just as they are for clothes,” she says. “The way you wear a cardigan, a headband, a bracelet or a purse is an extension of your personality.” So are pillows. In the entry, a small settee is littered with leopard-print pillows. The pillows on a velvet damask sofa in the den were hand-painted by Lane. A wrought-iron love seat in a cabana overlooking the pool is dressed in printed organza pillows made in Milan. In an earlier incarnation, they wore striped and floral cotton, what Libbie calls “the old Beverly Hills Hotel look.” Of course, none of the pillows have to match what they’re tossed on. As long as they have soul.
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Styled by Michael Eisenhower/Cloutier; hair: Daniel Erdmann/Artists; makeup: Motoko/Artists
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What Inspires Libbie Land
My son Alec and daughter Ella, 24/7.
My Manolo Blahnik thigh-high taupe suede boots with canary yellow leather
lining, “for their sheer beauty and drama.”
Gronk’s “Bon Voyage, Tormenta,” a floor-to-ceiling painting we own that is both romantic
and dangerous.
The hill country in the south of France for the textiles of Provence, the pottery, the Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
The Santa Anas.
