New York design gallery The Future Perfect has opened its third showroom, in a Hollywood Hills midcentury house complete with a focal fireplace, sliding glass doors and backyard pool.
Casa Perfect joins an ongoing trend of retail destinations set in Los Angeles residential spaces, including The Apartment by the Line and Seomi International.
The house was designed in 1957 by Korean-American architect David Hyun, whose other works in the city include the contrastingly ornate pastiche of a Japanese village located in a Little Tokyo shopping centre.
Alhadeff made very few changes to the existing space, save replacing the dark Fornasetti wallpaper in one bedroom with a softer gradient by Calico.
A confluence of factors inspired founder David Alhadeff to open up shop in LA, not least the growing number of collectors and designers in the city.
"LA has become an epicentre for creativity," he told Dezeen, citing local studios like Commune, Eric Roinstead, Johnathon Cross, and Victoria Morris as part of his inventory.
Another major reason was a sea change in retail business models. "It's no longer acceptable to put T-shirts on a rack and say it's a store," said Alhadeff. "You have to curate an experience."
This is a sentiment that Los Angeles – with its abundance of Disney-like outdoor shopping malls and more recent well-furnished residential showrooms – has already fully embraced.
Since he opened the first Future Perfect in Brooklyn in 2003, moved to Manhattan in 2009, and opened a second location in San Francisco in 2013, Alhadeff has shifted own business model from shop to gallery.
Casa Perfect is an appointment-only showroom, complete with requisite Southern California comforts like the pool.
Alhadeff sees pool parties as a prime platform to explore new business collaborations, "with swimwear or towel companies, which don't quite fit into my retail boxes in New York or San Francisco."
Currently, the house features works by The Future Perfect regulars including Lindsey Adelman, De La Espada, Michael Anastassiades and Bec Brittain.
Casa Perfect also presents never-before-seen collaborations with LA design studio Commune, including solid brass hardware created with jewellery designer Lisa Eisner, as well as cushions created with textile designer Adam Pogue and its latest collection of bedding for Hamburg House.
New outdoor furniture by Christian Woo will be installed along the pool deck.
Now 13 years into his business, Alhadeff has been closely tracking the aesthetic changes in the design world.
"Eclecticism, not a strict periodic moment, is the trend reining supreme," he said. "With the internet and its access to everything, we're all living in a mashup."
"Geographic and historical references are really getting blurred, and things may feel familiar, but they're brand new," Alhadeff continued, citing the hybrid Spanish garden/Grecian antiquity clay pots of LA-based ceramicist Eric Roinestad as an example.
"Originality is less important to young designers than a signature style," he added. "That's good. Design Miami this year had heart-stoppingly crazy work – fun, playful, energising work."
Many of the designers and collectors at the fair agreed, claiming that calm modernism is out and anarchic forms are in.
However, Alhadeff has been searching for this kind of work for many years previous.
"When I brought in the work of Piet Hein Eek in 2006, people thought it was whackadoo," Alhadeff said. "They said, 'that's crazy!' And now they say, 'oh, well that's nice'. That's the evolution of our eye. It's my job to push and find new things, to say 'oh wow!' again."
Photography is by Lauren Coleman.