Cher has lived her life on a stage in one way or another since she was seventeen years old.
So when she asked me to decorate her pied-à-terre in West Hollywood, I quickly realized that designing this amazing two-floor apartment was going to be no ordinary remodel. It needed to outshine any set she had ever set foot upon. Fantasy was the directive: an Indian fantasy to be exact. Cher wanted a home fit for a maharani or a Turkish princess. “I love all things exotic, Babe, Oriental, Zen, and magical, ” she said. Cher, known for her exuberant themed interiors over the years, was over her Gothic period and had become entranced with Buddhism and all the decorative trappings that such a meditative life encompasses.
The very first thing I bought for her was a nineteenth-century ivory painted tablet depicting an Indian deity. This small artwork inspired our palette of textured creams, tea-stained browns, ivory, chocolate, ebony, gold, bronze, and touches of rich merlot. Next a heavily carved triple-arch entryway reclaimed from a Rajasthan palace was used to ground the architecture and become the backdrop for her majestic bed, creating the instant magic Cher had desired.
The apartment that now contains items from India, Tibet, Turkey, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Morocco, and Syria was revealed to her for the first time in its finished state during a surprise birthday party thrown by her close friends: me, jewelry designer Loree Rodkin, and designers Richard and Laurie Lynn Stark. Complete with spicy Indian fare, bare-chested turban-topped waiters, and three hundred candles of all sizes imaginable, the truly Orientalist soiree welcomed Hollywood’s most exotic icon to her magical new home.
Project Data
Project name: Cher’s Hollywood Penthouse
Location: Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States
Program: A Penthouse’s Interior design
The people
Client / Owner / Developer: Cher
Interior Designer: Martyn Lawrence-Bullard Design
Text Description: © Courtesy of Martyn Lawrence-Bullard Design
Images: © Martyn Lawrence-Bullard Design
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