High Life

by Alexandria Abramian-Mott | Angeleno magazine | February 22, 2012

Low-slung sofas, sunken rooms, a perfectly circular dining room and entire walls of 12-foot floor-to-ceiling windows are enough to make female visitors wish they’d bothered with a beehive hairdo and a flowing cocktail dress before entering Pamella Protzel-Scott’s home. Located near the tip-top of Bel-Air, the 1963 house is perched above the area’s mega compounds in a higher-altitude zone of winding, still sidewalk-less streets and more modestly sized manses.

But it turns out that the floor-length chiffon isn’t required. Protzel-Scott, the creative director of the studiously casual fashion lines Splendid and Ella Moss, and husband Mark Scott, have spent the past two years crafting a decorating balancing act that honors the home’s cocktail-hour architecture while nudging it into a more laid-back present.

Out went the dated kitchen, the shag carpeting and the bad lighting. But other elements—most of them, in fact—stayed perfectly intact, including a fiddle-leaf ficus tree that was planted from a hole in the living room floor by the original owners. It now soars toward the high ceilings, forming a living space divider near a 14-foot-long sofa and a trio of copper Tom Dixon ceiling pendants. The couple also kept the ornate brass powder room fixtures, the series of hard-to-decorate curved walls and the fabulously frivolous arches that rise above the dining room’s original, suspended buffet.

“We were both Palm Springs children,” says Protzel-Scott. “Both our families would rent these beautiful midcentury houses there, so when we saw this place, we were like, ‘Aha! This is our vacation home that we can actually live in.’ We wanted this feeling that we were constantly in this retreat that can take us away from the city in just a few minutes.”

To create a retreat that was part retro Palm Springs, part present-day L.A., Protzel-Scott relied on her fashion sense to guide the way. She focused on creating something that would evoke a playful sense of ease without heavy decorating makeup—which explains the proliferation of comfortable furniture and the total lack of formal fabrics. “This is a house where no silk taffeta is allowed,” says Protzel-Scott. “I’m obsessed with comfort, both in fashion and at home, and I wanted this house to be warm and welcoming. Having a serious home is never something I’d want.”

Hence the living room with its low furniture, plenty of curves, and mix of ethnic and geometric cottons and linens; the dark and cozy media room with its sink-in charcoal gray velvet sectional and impossibly high-pile area rug; and the bedrooms, where lots of light and judicious hits of color and pattern are cheerful, happy and not too matchy-matchy. Partial credit goes to the actress Monet Mazur, a friend of the couple’s, who recently launched an interior design business and helped source some of the home’s elements.

“I think of these rooms as groups within my collection,” says Protzel-Scott of the 4,400-square-foot, four-bedroom house. “Each one tells its own story and has its own color scheme, and its own kind of patterns. It’s exactly how I approach collections for fashion and that mindset helped me approach the space.”

Next up? Ella Moss will debut its first shoe collection. “We did the entire design meeting for the shoes here in the living room,” says Protzel-Scott. “We looked at the way that prints were on the carpet, pulled out my jewelry and used all kinds of elements from my home for the collection. What I do with the brand is how I live my life.”