Stern’s annual fundraiser for the Museum of California Design is a kind of go-to event for L.A.’s design and architecture crowd. The do, this year honoring furniture designer Peter Shire, was generously hosted by Cecilia Dan, whose swank Frank Israel-designed modern home nestles happily in the scrub-brushy hills of Malibu.

The air wafted, the canapes circulated, and the Pacific Ocean glistened from below. Sunday, the sea was turquoise and flat. All was well with the world. Lucky us.

Amongst the party’s many interesting creative folk was a strikingly handsome, very nice chap named Emilio, born in the Caribbean, in Guyana, to a Catholic family.  It’s odd, given his background, how the twists and turns of world events have affected his career. Explained Emilio:

My background is in theater, playing Shakespeare for years, touring the world.

After 911, living in London, my career got a boost — terrorist roles. I played a Pakistani intelligence officer, a Baghdadian intelligence officer, and OBL’s military commander in Afghanistan running the training camps. I was in “The Path to 911″ with Harvey Keitel.

Moving here a year and a half ago, I expected more of the same. Instead, I’m doing funny Indians. You know, broad comedic Indian roles. I played an Indian pharmacist in a “Sit ‘n Sleep” commercial and the father of an Indian family in the closing segment of “90210.”

A crazy world, with crazy roles to play, people to meet, and lives to lead …

Like this? Read more:

• Museum of California Design’s latest garden shindig in Malibu
• Last year’s event honoring Chas & Ray Eames wasn’t too shabby either.
• And then there was Rudi. Rudi Gernreich.
• Bill Stern’s keen eye for California design.

Another year, another magnificent, architecturally significant California home where Bill will host his annual benefit and fundraiser. It’s the Dan House, designed by Franklin Israel in 1995, and not open to the public.

This year’s event honors designer, artist, craftsman, Peter Shire for his outstanding contributions to American design.

Examples of Shire’s exuberant furniture and ceramics will be on exhibit against a backdrop of ocean and canyon vistas.

The Museum’s 2011 Henry Award will be presented to Shire by Frances Anderton, host of KCRW radio station’s DnA: Design and Architecture. Anderton is also the Los Angeles Editor for Dwell Magazine, and a contributor to the New York Times.

Another smart and funny Shire chair at right …

Bill Stern is a superb design expert and his traveling museum merits support. Gifts from his personal collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art include the Ultra California coffee pot, designed by Gale Turnbull, pictured at left .

See you there!

Dress code: way cool ~

_{Dan House, 1995, Franklin Israel
Photo: Erhard Pfeiffer}

Museum of California Design annual award event | Sunday, Sept 18 | Dan House, Carbon Canyon, Malibu | for tickets

Like this? Read more:

• Last year’s event honoring Chas & Ray Eames wasn’t too shabby either.
• And then there was Rudi. Rudi Gernreich.
• Bill Stern’s keen eye for California design.

Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, will present the museum’s Henry Award to the Eames’ grandchildren, Eames Demetrios and Lucia Dewey Atwood.

Chatting with arts•meme, Museum Director Bill Stern, who gives his detailed attention to this event every year, noted, “The extraordinary quality of Eames design is perhaps more apparent today than 50 years ago. If you drive down Beverly Blvd., the entire window of Design Within Reach is Eames furniture. It’s the appropriate time to honor Charles and Ray Eames.”

“And … where better to honor them than in the house that Charles designed with the great Finnish-American architect/designer Eero Saarinen?” he added.

“It looks out over Santa Monica Canyon, Will Rogers beach, and the endless Pacific Ocean,” said Stern. “It’s as ultra-California as you can get. It’s the quintessential modern home.”

Museum of California Design benefit | Sunday Oct 3 | info

Our guy is Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985) the Vienna-born, Los Angeles-based fashion designer known for his zestful, pared down aesthetic. His clothes celebrated the youth and action in American culture.

Gernreich’s look screams swinging sixties. Today, the clothes remain clean, classy, and even classic.

Beyond his outerwear, Gernreich was a lingerie designer — who urged bralessness!  He eschewed bones, wires, padding and other claptrap of the atomic fifties. The Gernreich woman was natural and free — a Californian.

An Angeleno, he cared for swimwear. He made this fabulous geometric swimsuit. He is most renowned for the topless version.

Gernreich also experimented in new fabrics and materials, including plastic. That white mini dress in the photo is just totally fantastic. Roll over, Mondrian!

Gernreich will be honored at a benefit for the Museum of California Design held Sunday, November 22 at a private home in the Hollywood Hills. How great does that sound?

A very handsome man and a gay activist before his time, Gernreich also had a dance background. He performed with Lester Horton here in L.A. In fact, he was greatly inspired by movement and dancewear — leotards, tights, stretchy fabrics, and lots ‘o leg showing.

Director William Claxton‘s 1967 video, “Basic Black,” featuring Gernreich muse Peggy Moffitt modeling his fashions, will be screened on Sunday. Moffitt, still in fine fettle, will attend the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ojaofcXmS8

Photo credits: William Claxton LLC, Courtesy of Demont Photo Management/Fahey Klein Gallery; Time, Inc.

The fancifully imagined, richly colored paper labels adhered to wooden packing crates. When (pre-printed) cardboard boxes replaced the crates, labels fell into disuse. Warehouses were full of them by the early 1950s. Now they are valued art objects.

The citrus labels are displayed in an unusual context in a show at CAFAM galleries, 5814 Wilshire Blvd. Curator Bill Stern, executive director of the Museum of California Design, gave me a wonderful personal tour through his show called “Myth & Manpower: Graphics and the California Dream.”

Stern selects the best of the citrus labels, all noteworthy in their unabashed fantasy renderings of California agri-business. The labels project a culture of purity and wholesomeness to the point of sterility, carefully editing out any inkling of laborer sweat. In this version of reality, fruit magically appears, with no human intermediary, direct from the good earth.

He pairs them, one-by-one, with mirroring counter-versions reflecting the farm laborers’ reality — in the form of United Farm Worker labor movement posters. The kooky Uncle Sam citrus label, above, is paired with a UFW mobilizing poster, “Together We are Strong,” at right.

Stern teases out parallel tracks in both image and theme highlighting the intensely opposing messages. Fascinating that a piece of fruit could foster a propaganda war waged through pen and ink.

A citrus label image depicting carefree weekenders cruising in an automobile is paired with one in a UFWA poster galvanizing a worker’s strike.

These dueling propoganda tools, juxtaposed, reflect the power of graphic design to convey strong overt or subliminal messages. Taken together, they forge a complete picture — the real picture – of a significant chapter in California’s social and economic history.

Show is on view through January 10, 2010.

Like this?  More on the Museum of California Design:

• MoCaD honors Charles & Ray Eames

_{Image credits: Archive, A.K. Smiley Public Library; Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles; Museum of California Design; Royal Chicano Air Force Archives}