Martini Modern

Marilyn is back. An eight-meter-high sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in her famous high-flying white dress from “The Seven Year Itch” has adorned the Museum Way in downtown Palm Springs since late April 2021. Some like it hot – that doesn’t just apply to America’s platinum blonde diva, who was discovered by a Hollywood talent agent at the pool of the Palm Springs Racquet Club in 1949. It’s true that California’s desert jewel was considered a faded vacation oasis for golfing retirees and frail ladies with white toupeed hair (“Q-tips” in local jargon). But the image has changed – Palm Springs is shining again. If you’re lucky, you’ll see Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes shopping on Palm Canyon Drive or run into Diane von Fürstenberg, Charlize Theron or Tom Ford in the garden of the luxury hotel The Parker. But what are celebrities looking for in a village with 45,000 residents, two parallel main streets and 350 days of sunshine a year?

“It’s unfair,” says Jaime Kowal, “there’s so much more here: festivals, museums, bars, boutiques.” The Canadian photographer came on vacation in 2013 and stayed. She liked the cheerful atmosphere, the unpretentious demeanor of the often rich and famous residents, and the architecture. Especially the architecture. She is not the only one. Lovers of the so-called Desert Modernism have always been among the regulars of the desert city. It is thanks to the interplay of several coincidences that an architectural style with cult potential emerged in the desert. To make a long story short, Palm Springs was founded in 1883 by a San Francisco lawyer whose son suffered from tuberculosis. At the time, there was little that could be done about the disease except to move to a dry warm climate. This was available in southern California, in a vast plain with many springs surrounded by tall petticoat palms. Gradually, more and more people came with lung problems, and as the century ended, a handful of small sanitariums stood in Palm Springs.

In the 1920s, the first Hollywood stars showed up and it wasn’t long before the sunny desert town became a glamorous hangout for actors and their entourage. Everyone who was anyone was here: Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, Dean Martin, Cary Grant, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo and, above all, Frank Sinatra, whose estate with wing pool on East Alejo Road is now rented out to paying guests for just under $2,000 a night. All these celebrities needed homes, and so architects flocked in, including a group of talented young Europeans who gladly traded the rubble landscapes of World War II for the ideal world of California.

The Swiss Albert Frey, the Austrians Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler and others turned Palm Springs into a gigantic experimental laboratory. They experimented with Bauhaus and Modernism and, together with their American colleagues, developed Desert Modernism, which dispensed with ornamentation and propagated a matter-of-fact, geometric formal language. In the warm desert climate and the grandiose landscape of the Coachella Valley, the desire arose to open spaces to nature and to merge buildings with their surroundings. Several thousand modernist buildings were built, many with the characteristic floating butterfly roofs.

Jaime Kowal owns one of them. When she discovered the apartment building, erected in 1955, it was in a neglected and dilapidated condition. She bought and renovated it, turning each of the former five apartments into a guest suite with a living room and kitchen. The Amado opened in 2013 and immediately became Palm Springs’ insider tip. “I couldn’t have pulled off a project like this in a big city,” the owner explains, “but here it worked. There were options, and the costs were manageable.” That’s changing now; real estate is getting expensive. But if you look, you can still find beautiful three-bedroom homes with terraces and pools priced between $500,000 and $700,000. Leonardo di Caprio spent a little more money when he purchased a 650 square meter mansion at 432 Hermosa Place in the coveted Old Las Palmas neighborhood in March 2014. The building ensemble, designed in 1964 by American modernist Donald Wexler for blonde Southern belle Dinah Shore, cost $5.2 million. Whether and how often the actor uses it, no one knows. Although one hears from time to time about sightings of Leo in Palm Springs, the star rents out his villa – in line with the Airbnb trend. Those who can spare from $4,500 a day live “in one of the finest examples of mid-century architecture.” So says the rental log.

“There are more beautiful examples,” says Brigitte Lehnert, who moved to Palm Springs from Los Angeles with her husband, André Boughtwood, in 2012, opened the Flow Modern store in the Uptown Design District, and sells exquisite vintage modern furniture and accessories to match the homes. Take, for example, the 1946 mansion designed by Richard Neutra for department store millionaire Edgar J. Kaufmann, considered a masterpiece by the Viennese architect. The intricate, multi-winged glass, steel and stone building has had many owners, including the singer Barry Manilow. It’s been expanded, remodeled, modernized, in short, scrambled several times. Beth and Brent Harris bought it in 1992 for $1.5 million. The two studied the blueprints and had the house reconstructed from the floor plan to the wall colors. They sourced the furniture of the original manufacturers; the kitchen is made of beautiful stainless steel. In 2008, after the couple’s divorce, the Kaufmann House went under the hammer at Christie’s for $15 million – however, the anonymous buyer dropped the deal, so the property is still owned by the Harris’ to this day and alternately lived in by both of them.

Or the Ship of the Desert, which actually sticks to South Camino Monte like a wrecked ocean liner. Built in 1936 in the most beautiful Streamline Modernism style, it belongs to fashion queen Trina Turk, whose exuberant style is also on display in her fashion store located in a gleaming white Albert Frey building on North Palm Canyon Drive. Like Modern Flow, the Trina Turk store is part of the Uptown Design District, where even Americans leave their cars and walk a few blocks. Every other store is called something with “Modern” in it and sells vintage furniture or new design pieces with a ’50s look to sometimes celebrity customers who barely make themselves known. “When Anne Hathaway came into my store, I had a long conversation with her without even guessing who she was,” says A La Mod owner James Claude, “She bought a pale pink Murano vase from Seguso and seemed very pleased with her find.” Hollywood has rediscovered Palm Springs: sometimes Cameron Diaz is photographed drinking a martini at Melvyn’s Bar, sometimes Kanye West is photographed dining at Copley’s. When Angelina Jolie checked into the Hotel Parker under a false name, not even the receptionist noticed. That’s the way it’s always been here: celebrities are left alone, even when they’re drinking their cappuccino in public. “No one takes themselves very seriously,” says Jaime Kowal, “which is why life here is so much fun.”