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It’s not an overstatement to say that Kelly Wearstler is among the most prominent interior designers in the world. Born in Myrtle Beach, Wearstler attended college in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art before moving to New York to intern for Milton Glaser. Upon graduating, Wearstler moved to Los Angeles where she opened her own interior design firm in 1995. Uniquely, a year prior to opening her firm, Wearstler posed as September’s Playmate of the Month, which helped her pay off her student loans and open her own business. 

Shortly after opening her firm, Wearstler decorated the home of real estate developer Brad Korzen, whom she later married. This project led her to design many of the residential and hotel

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Born in Chicago, Brigette Romanek made her way to Los Angeles after realizing her passion for interior design. The former singer and handbag designer's first interior design project was a collaboration with her friend and cofounder of nonprofit Baby2Baby, Kelly Sawyer Patricof. She helped Patricof outfit her Malibu home and has worked as a designer ever since. She now runs a highly successful design company in L.A. - Hancock Design - with her business partner Estee Stanley. 

Romanek’s inventive work has led her to become among L.A.’s most sought-after interior designers. Romanek is entirely self-taught, which may contribute to why her designs are particularly imaginative and compelling. Rather than stick to rigid design rules and

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John Lautner is widely considered to be among the most important 20th-century architects in the United States. Lautner was born and raised in Marquette, Michigan, the natural surroundings of which greatly influenced his distinct architectural style. The future architect became immersed in architecture from a young age, helping his father build a chalet at just 12 years old. 

Despite his early interest in architecture, Lautner earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Northern Michigan University. However, after reading the autobiography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner decided to pursue an architecture education, applying to Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin. 

Lautner was one of Wright’s first Taliesin

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Joseph Eichler is a post-war real estate developer who’s most famous for building high-quality, modernist homes on a large scale. According to his son, Eichler was inspired to develop well-crafted modernist homes for the masses after living in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Seeking to make these homes more accessible to the middle class, Eichler developed over 11,000 modernist tract homes in California, which were aptly dubbed “Eichlers”.

The famously liberal Eichler was also the first large-scale tract builder to sell his homes to minorities, stepping down from the National Association of Home Builders in 1958 to protest its racially discriminative policies and practices.

Eichler enlisted prominent architects to

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Given his massively influential and prolific work, it’s pretty difficult not to know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. Among the most prominent American architects in history, Wright designed more than 1,000 structures in addition to being an interior designer, writer, and educator.

Wright attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for just two semesters before deciding to study architecture in the more practical setting of an architectural firm. After leaving school in 1887, he moved to Chicago where he worked as an architectural detailer under J.L. Silsbee, a prominent architect whose masterful sketches are thought to have influenced the sharp lines of Wright designs. From there, Wright went on to work in the architectural firm of

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Walter Gropius was a German architect and one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. In addition to his progressive designs, Gropius is famous for founding the Bauhaus School in Germany, which incited an architectural movement that connected fine art with function and practicality. He served as the school's director between 1919-1928 before Nazis closed the school for its resistance to the traditional aesthetic that Nazism favored.

Gropius began studying architecture at the technical institutes in Munich and Berlin-Charlottenburg, joining Peter Behrens architecture firm shortly after graduation. Gropius has attributed his penchant for progressive architecture to his time with Behrens, specifically when he solved

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Archibald Quincy Jones is among the most influential modernist architects in the United States. Jones studied architecture at the University of Washington, graduating in 1936, before moving to Los Angeles to work with modernist architects like Douglas Honnold, George Vernon Russell, and Paul R. Williams.

In 1942, Jones received a commission as a lieutenant commander in the Navy and was discharged three years later in 1945. Upon his discharge, Jones returned to LA to open up his own architectural office where he honed his unique style and voice in modernism. Jones directed much of his focus on updating and refining accessible, postwar housing, emphasizing economical and sustainable building methods.

He was among the first

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Born in Vienna on April 8, 1892, Richard Neutra is an Austrian-American architect who merged Bauhaus modernism with Southern California building traditions to create an original style adaptation called Desert Modernism. Neutra moved to the United States in 1923 where he worked with iconic architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler to hone his unique style.

A major critique of traditional modernism is that it imposes strict rules on people and regions despite their differences. One of the reasons Neutra became so influential was due to his flexible and personalized approach to creating modernist homes. He took care to tailor to the needs of the client and the surrounding landscape to create one-of-a-kind designs

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, commonly referred to as Mies, was a German-American architect who, along with architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius, is considered among the pioneers of modernist architecture. Mies began his career as an apprentice at the Peter Behrens’ design studio where he learned design theories and techniques working alongside the likes of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.

After years spent honing his design chops with prominent architects and designers, Mies became the director of famed German art and architecture school, Bauhaus. However, Nazism ultimately closed the school, leading him to move to the United States. Once in the U.S., Mies accepted a position as head of the architecture program

Interior designers Louisa Pierce (right) and Emily Ward (left) met in 2012 at an East Village bar in Manhattan. There, they bonded over their love of Art Deco lines and eccentric interiors. This initial bond ultimately led the duo to officially join design forces, becoming one of the most sought-after design duos to date, dubbed Pierce & Ward. Their eclectic designs have caught the eyes of many a famous client, with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson, and Kate Hudson commissioning the pair to design their most intimate spaces. The firm has also been named to Architectural Digest's AD100 2019, an esteemed list featuring today's top talent in architecture and design.

Given their unique aesthetic, it’s easy to see why elite clientele are so drawn