Perfect Patterns

by Elizabeth Varnell | Angeleno magazine | February 22, 2012

The silk scarf has a storied fashion history that evolves with each runway season. But in Beverly Hills circa 1980, the accessory dictated entire looks, and Ethel Marcus and her collection were the talk of the town. To interior designer Alysson La Fourcade, she was Nana, but to ladies who lunched at Bonwit Teller, Saks and Neiman Marcus, she was the Scarf Lady of Beverly Hills. In those days, the top three floors of the Beverly Wilshire held apartments, and Marcus would emerge from hers in an Adolfo suit or a cashmere sweater and matching neckwear by Hermès, Pucci or Ferragamo.

La Fourcade vividly remembers one of her grandmother’s pieces that she herself coveted as a teenager. “She finally gave me a sheer leopard print silk scarf when I was 15, during Madonna’s era,” she says. “I’d wear it in my hair. I wore it so much that it fell apart.” After Marcus passed away five years ago, La Fourcade inherited more than 500 scarves. Rather than wear them, she has had them framed and hung throughout her 1960s ranch house off Mulholland Drive. “I frame lots of vintage things,” says La Fourcade, who constantly redesigns her living spaces and is now at work on the interiors of Entourage writer Rob Weiss’ house. “When I looked at the piles of orange boxes in my closet, I knew what to do.” She showed the heirlooms to the owners of La Brea’s Habité, where her first capsule collection of the framed scarves is set to launch this month. The pieces can also be taken out and worn, and prices range from $1,500 to $10,000. How will she part with them? “I’m not attached to things,” she says. “I always say, ‘If it all goes away tomorrow, I’ll live in a box. But it has to be an orange Hermès one.’”

La Fourcade’s Hots
Franklin & Company Tavern, bookstores, the classic vinyl played on Sirius XM Radio channel 26, Elizabeth Taylor movie marathons

La Fourcade’s Nots
Hanging out at Starbucks all day and calling it “the office,” pulled pork sandwiches, shopping malls, flip-flops