2014 Retrospective

A review of the year 2014; the work obtained good choices and the opportunity to do even better.

I am ready for a new beginning in 2015 and excited about the opportunity to continue my adventure!

Showing good times and environments that will be kept. These are the things I achieved in 2014 and which will continue in this New Year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJSyhcyYQyQ

The dedication to my work led me to achieve new challenges in my career. In 2014 I finished the decoration of a 7k sq. ft. residence in Beverly Hills, CA. I started this project in 2013 and I had so much fun with the opportunity to share good moments with my client choosing, buying and making decisions.

With my design and construction firm in Los Angeles CA, I have being able to approach bigger and substantial clients. In March 2014, I started the design and decoration of a 13k sq. ft. office in Agoura Hills, CA. I spent all year planning, designing and decorating. I worked very close with my client. He was so pleased with the results, he asked me to design the gardens with a plaza area including the water features and the main lobby for the building of the office.

“Erika Winters Design expands its horizon to Los Angeles CA.” This is the phrase I used in 2011. Since then, I have not stopped working and seeking for more horizons.

Among the projects this year, my firm started and finished a Carwash and a 76 Bella MarketPlace Gas Station both in Long Beach, CA, a Circle K convenience store in Placentia, CA, a Bella MarketPlace in San Marcos CA, and a Bella Marketplace in Victorville CA.

Beside all, I love to write as a hobby, I express myself writing for MasarikTV.com.  I am able to share personal and professional experiences of my traveling, art and museums visits, long nights designing and my practice in the field! 

http://masaryk.tv/80441/la-aventura-de-montar-un-despacho-en-los-angeles-california

Fortunately, media in Mexico and USA published my work too.

http://contractormag.com/plumbing/southern-california-gas-station-johns-go-glam

Take a look! My portfolio was voted most popular by the Houzz community. Badge of Best of Design 2014.   

We are closing the year with a new image for erikawintersdesign.com so come and visit us!!

I thank you all for your trust, friendship and confidence.

Enjoy

Erika Winters












Photo: Paul Redmond Photography

Setting Up a Studio in Los Angeles: Let the Adventure Begin . . .

For many years, I had the good fortune to have my showroom in a house on Atlixco 45 in the Colonia Condesa in Mexico City, in the same building where I had grown up with my sisters, my mother and great aunts, and where my mother and her brothers had been raised before me.

The Condesa district was also where my parents met each other, fell in love, and were reputedly the best-looking couple in the neighborhood. That’s right, my mum and dad.

As a young girl, my mother would tell me about the importance of “beauty”, “style” and “art”. This meant that I grew up surrounded by music and art books, and we would go on visits to museums, galleries, antique stores, and as we grew older she would take us to open-air concerts in Chapultepec Park and at Mexico’s largest public university, the UNAM. My mother also enrolled me on summer courses at museums such as the Carrillo Gil. And of course, how could I forget our ritual visits to La Lagunilla market in downtown Mexico City, where we would always come down with something afterwards!

These experiences definitely lie at the roots of the person I am today and provide a source of inspiration to me. The years went by and after spending my childhood playing in that house, I had become a woman. 

I named my showroom Erika Winters Design just over 10 years ago. 
Who would have guessed that after 40 years the house would become the home for my professional career as an interior designer. I converted a part of the house into my workshop, where I produced several pieces of restored furniture in a myriad of colors and exotic materials. A house that created decorative designs, dreams and realities. 

Thanks to my “good taste” and “characteristic style” I attracted clients who helped me continue to hone my skills and grow in my chosen career. I was always very attentive to my clients’ tastes and needs, translating them for their spaces to give a chic and urban touch, but always respecting their personalities.

At the same time, my curiosity led me to seek out and experiment in new fields to continue developing my imagination. Soon after setting up my showroom, I began to travel abroad, always seeking to broaden my horizons. 

Soon an opportunity arose in Los Angeles, California. “The Living Room” on Sunset Boulevard launched the Erika Winters Design brand, using one of my collections of restored furniture at my workshop in Mexico City. This gave me the wings to take off and cross new frontiers in the world of interior design. 

Almost without me realizing it, everything had fallen into place for me to take the next step. The change was not easy and required a lot of work along the way. 

Once established, I found I was in contact with new people and potential clients. I realized that my tastes in design, color and the cutting-edge were not far removed from my new situation.

 

After three years in my new space, I have been immersed in new styles, colors, materials, tastes and needs: the same raw materials but from a new perspective. 

I realize that I am still restless, opening up the panorama before me to offer new possibilities and radical changes. 

I now understand that I am the business. Wherever I am, or wherever I’m flying to, my home and my profession will always be right here, where I am. 

Enjoy
Erika Winters

New York: when love comes through the eyes.

Writing is not that easy, but in the past few years I have being training myself because the need to express my experiences, feelings, ideas and concepts.

Today I like to share with you some of my writing...

 I always remember my dad used to tell me that travel was everything: "¡Hija! si no has viajado no has vivido." He was the one who took me on my first trip to New York City. We arrived at the airport and took the bus straight to Central Station at Port Authority, on 42^nd Street (which was very extravagant at the time). And I remember my first reaction, emerging onto the street and seeing the New York Times building, was to look up in amazement at the architecture from different periods contrasting with the blue sky. We were visiting in early March, at the start of spring, just as the city was beginning to thaw. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I confess: I fell for Manhattan right there and then. And ever since that first trip to the city that never sleeps, I have not lost my sense of wonder. My last visit was no exception, because this time it was my turn to show my children the magic of the “Big Apple.”

The days went by a whirl, at the cutting-edge of architecture, art, history and fashion, days that I’m sure my children will remember forever.

Apart from visiting contemporary art museums such as the Guggenheim and the MomA, the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we also toured the Chelsea art galleries to take in some contemporary conceptual art. 

  We walked the High Line, the mile-long linear park built on a disused railway line, enjoying great architecture and design from every angle. We admired the impressive combinations of concrete, wood, innovative materials and vegetation that have been turning Manhattan into an awe-inspiring and sublime city, not just in its exterior spaces but also in its sober, elegant and modern interiors; my fellow interior designers here are using bold colors and fantastic textures. The furniture and decorative objects have been perfectly chosen to convey a sense of “ordered chaos” in which everything always looks like it belongs, due to that fact that is openly visible and available to all the senses. And so to take advantage of all the Big City has to offer, we entered all the hotels, restaurants and bars that our legs could carry us to; we wondered at the interiors full of majestic marble, luxurious carpets, magnificent candelabras and beautiful bronze filigree work found on many of the handrails and doors.

 

 We visited a range of hotels, from those with the longest histories and traditions such as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the Pierre Hotel and the Plaza Hotel, to the more contemporary and modern Standard, High Line, ACE Hotel, NoMad Hotel, and the Bryant Park Hotel in the American Radiator building. We also explored every corner of Noho, Soho, Greenwich Village and Tribeca.

And since every trip must have an element of surprise, the three of us headed to the Upper West Side where my children and I ended up dining on hamburgers and milkshakes at Tom's Restaurant, just like Jerry Seinfeld, Elaine Benes, Cosmo Kramer and George Costanza use to do. 

 Our trip coincided with various important events, including the Spring-Summer 2015 "Design Fashion Week" in Manhattan. The catwalks were overflowing with incredible designs, prints and colors: this season’s three most important aspects, which are being combined in free-spirited and geometric forms, with great contrasts. Primary colors again! Yellow, Blue and Red are the dominant colors.  Black and White are the canvas for the rest of the palette.

I think the Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera deserves all the praise this season. However, ultimately everything is relevant, especially here in the capital of art, fashion, design and the avant-garde, since trends and fashion are made by the people who wear what is created by the catwalk and underground designers.  

And it is even truer to say, fashion changes every day.

                          







                             



                             Enjoy
                          -Erika Winters-