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CLOTH & PAPER OPENS ON LARCHMONT
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Suzan Filipek
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DESIGNER Marci Bronkar at her new boulevard salon.
SHELTER CLOTH tote bags and pillows.
When Marcie Bronkar left the Pacific Design Center after 25 years, and didn’t move her boutique textile and wallpaper line to trendy Third St. or Robertson Blvd., it caused a stir.
Larchmont, her designer friends asked in disbelief.
But after everyone visited her early 1920s storefront and stepped inside the stylish salon on the south end of the boulevard, they understood. “Ohhhhhhhh….” they would say, she smiles.
Cloth & Paper opened last month at 128 ½ N. Larchmont Blvd.
Wallpaper designs inspired by 18th-century France, hand-painted fabrics, sturdy linens and the first in her furniture line are on display. The lightweight Art Deco chairs made of birch and velvet will be featured in “House Beautiful” magazine in April.
She still sells to the trade, but for the first time her merchandise and her expertise is available to the public. She even makes house calls.
And she is “thrilled beyond belief to be on Larchmont.” It’s friendlier, more user-friendly than when her showroom was squeezed in among the many in the 950,000 square foot “PDC” on Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood.
On the boulevard she can take better care of her customers, she adds. Unlike anywhere else, customized wallpaper—among her specialties—can be ordered in small enough amounts to cover a hallway.
The area’s traditional homes are filled with beautiful treasures and heirlooms and deserve better than the homogenized, questionable-quality found at the malls. And, antiques come with enormous price tags, she adds, sitting on a high-back chair she named “Camelot.” It is covered in an elegant black-and-white print, one of her period piece fabrics.
“There has to be a fresh, modern approach and strong quality. Even during the recession people want quality,” says Marcie, who lives a few blocks away in Hancock Park with her husband Paul, son Denis, and collie Sam.
A native New Yorker, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Parsons School of Design, New York. In college she was an abstract expressionist painter and printmaker, when one of her etchings sold in an exhibit and was made into a fabric. “As soon as I found out you could do fabric, and it’s as creative and soulful as painting, I fell in love with it.”
She took a few classes, interned with her mentor the late celebrated decorator Angelo Donghia and soon was creating collections for large companies in the U.S. and Europe. She worked with curators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, and had access to the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She was exclusive consultant to the Paloma Picasso Collection. Later, under her Home Couture label, Ralph Lauren was among her clients.
Today her textiles and wall coverings can be found in Donghia showrooms around the country, as well as at DeSousa/Hughes in San Francisco beginning Feb. 1. She buys Belgian linens, Italian silks and French sheers. A coat line will debut in the spring and be an exclusive at the Larchmont store.
Her newest “miracle” fabric Sugar Hill is amazing on many fronts, she beams. It is manufactured in the U.S. yet looks European, and the stitched, floral-motif pattern seems handmade, but, surprise! It isn’t, saving the customer money.
“I just love it,” she says. Like much of her line, the fabric will be exclusive to her L.A. shop. “This is my design lab… my small, Left Bank salon.”
You can reach Marcie at 323-336-5626; or visit clothandpaper.net.
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