kids and hosting friends, Kendrick
said. “We anchored the room with a
large Living Divani sofa that could
accommodate Sunday family
gatherings. We upholstered it in a
Perennials indoor-outdoor fabric
that is very resistant to stains and
spills,” Kendrick said. And where
there might be feathers in the sofa,
there’s foam.
One of the spaces Kendrick and
Lokitz love is the children’s play-
room, which has navy walls and
whimsical pops of color, including a
pink custom-made sofa with the
look of mohair. “We wanted this
room to be fun and wacky since the
living room is pretty calm andMarkle, recently selected a vegan
paint for royal baby Archie’s room.
What makes it vegan? It’s free of ca-
sein, traditionally used as a binder
for wall paint, which is made from
cow’s milk.
Meanwhile, several of Califor-
nian Elon Musk’s new Teslas are
slated to go fully vegan in 2020 while
Bentley is catering to California and
U.K. clientele requests by offering
vegan interiors — including one
made from leftover wine industry
grapes.
There’s also the environmen-
tally minded French designer Phil-
ippe Starck’s recent collaboration
with Cassina, the high-end Italian
furniture design company (which
has a location in Los Angeles on
Beverly Boulevard). Starck’s de-
sign features a luxe collection of so-
fas and other furniture upholstered
in his novel Apple Ten Lork, a “veg-
an leather” derived from apple
cores and other waste from the ap-
ple industry. He’s also experi-
mented with a flexible pineapple
textile dubbed Piñatex, sourced
from the cellulose fiber in pineapple
leaves.
Miami-based interior designer
Deborah DiMare, who has clients in
New York and California, is ecstatic
to see this rise in vegan design.
She runs DiMare Design with an
emphasis on creating custom veg-
an, sustainable and toxic-free envi-
ronments. That means her furnish-
ings are free of leather-bound
books, geese-down comforters,
crocodile pillow covers and sheep
wool rugs, among other animal-de-
rived items.
DiMare points toward the wool
industry, which has been accused of
cruelty, as one of the many reasons
she decided to switch to vegan fur-
nishing. “There’s no way that you
can bring in animal-based materi-
als and decor and call it sustainable
or call it clean or call it healthy,” she
said. “It’s like saying carrot cake is
not fattening. It’s just so toxic, and it
is so devastating to the environ-
ment.”
It’s worth noting that raising an-
imals for our food — and fabric — re-
quires large swaths of land as well as
energy and water and that it’s well-
documented that animal agricul-
ture produces large amounts of
emissions that pollute our air and
water. Thus, vegan advocates argue
that by avoiding animal products
they are de facto environmentalists.
For alternatives to wool,
whether baby alpaca, cashmere or
merino, DiMare suggests hemp and
bamboo silk mixes. “Anything with
a hemp or jute or sea grass mix will
give that rough texture that wool
has without the gamy smell,” she
said. DiMare also likes cork for up-
holstery and wall coverings.
As for a silk replacement? Di-
Mare says banana silk and Tencel
(made from fiber found in wood
pulp) are super soft and look and
feel just like the real thing, without
vast numbers of silk worms being
sacrificed. “I try my best, when do-
ing pieces for my furniture line, to
stick with textiles that are as clean
as possible — dye-free linens, hemp,
bamboo and banana silks. For du-
rability, faux high-end leathers
work very well,” DiMare said. She
says vegan leather is more durable
than that made from cowhide and
likes the buttery-soft textiles from
Holly Hunt and Kravet.
Always vegan options
When Kanal and Lokitz reno-
vated their home several years ago,
they used several of these alterna-
tives. “Knowing nothing in our
home has suffered adds to the
beauty of it,” Lokitz said.
It helped that she and Kanal al-
ready had mostly animal-free items
because Lokitz says down has al-
ways “creeped” her out. But they
also wanted stylish and modern
pieces to balance the heaviness of
their 1920s Spanish-style home with
its high beam ceilings and iron-
framed windows.
The couple met Kendrick at
their children’s preschool in Silver
Lake, and their visions aligned, al-
though Kendrick had never dab-
bled in all-vegan furnishing.
“It was actually really exciting,
and once we dove into those param-
eters it really wasn’t that challeng-
ing to do,” Kendrick said. “It’s al-
most like eating out for vegan food
in L.A.; everywhere you go there’s
always vegan options.”
The expansive light-filled living
room is the main hub of the house-
hold, so the owners wanted it to not
only look fantastic but to hold up to
wear and tear from playing with the
serene,” said Kendrick. One stand-
out piece is a leopard-pattern nylon
rug. There’s also a vibrant seafoam
green vintage ’70s Saporiti lounge
chair. Many vegan lifestyle enthusi-
asts, such as L.A.-based musician
Moby (who is so dedicated to his an-
imal activism he recently had “Veg-
an for Life” tattooed on his neck),
tout upcycling as a vegan-friendly
option.
“The only challenge we came
across in terms of everything you
would think of when interior design
happens — style, colors, budget —
was a large rug,” said Lokitz. Al-
though cotton kilims or dhurries
have Kendrick’s spot-on cool aes-thetic, they weren’t as durable as
wool.
Kendrick ended up selecting a
synthetic cut-pile rug from Perenni-
als Fabrics that didn’t sacrifice cozi-
ness and used Perennials vegan tex-
tiles for reupholstering vintage
pieces, including Vladimir Kagan
lounge chairs in a pewter-hued faux
leather.
The result of Kendrick’s design
is a modern aesthetic with a slight
masculine vibe. “We’re really proud
of it because it just proves that you
don’t have to sacrifice personal
style or taste or function; you can be
vegan and have it all,” Lokitz said.
After designing the Kanal-Lokitz home, Kendrick was
brought on to design the interiors
for Moby’s animal-free Silver Lake
restaurant Little Pine, housed in a
1940s Art Deco building complete
with the musician’s own forest
photographs, rust-colored vegan
leather cushions and raw wood.
Kendrick says that after work-
ing on both projects, her Studio
Hus design firm now abstains from
using animal materials and has
more of a sustainable approach to
design — in part because of custom-
ers’ demand for it.
At Pacific Design Center in West
Hollywood, Jeff Sampson, vice
president of marketing, has also
seen the interest in vegan design
swell. “Vegan hasn’t been a category
that we have used in the past to cat-
egorize the broad array of goods
that is available here at the PDC,”
Sampson said. “But that may
change due to the growing interest
in the vegan lifestyle.”‘You need to pay for it’
Among the PDC’s vegan-
friendly offerings are the Holly
Hunt showroom’s high-end textile
brand Mokum’s new La Primavera
textiles collection, in which almost
every piece is 100% polyester or
mixed with other vegan-friendly
materials like acrylic, linen or even
steel. There’s also the A. Rudin
showroom’s luxury faux leather and
vinyl upholstery, handmade in
downtown Los Angeles, and mod-
ern resin furniture pieces by O’Hara
Studio.
But there are no PDC show-
rooms designated as all-vegan.
“It’s definitely still an emerging
trend,” said Haily Zaki, cofounder
of L.A. Design Festival, which fea-
tures interiors and architecture
from Los Angeles and has been run-
ning annually for almost a decade.
She notes that the vegan trend is
further along in fashion because
pieces are smaller and generally
less expensive and complicated to
make. “Here is the thing: If you want
something to be vegan design, you
need to pay for it. And it’s expen-
sive.” Zaki said. She explains that
because such careful sourcing is in-
volved, many pieces have to be cus-
tom-designed and ordered.
Lokitz posited that cruelty-free
pieces don’t have to be over-compli-
cated. She points to a rug in her
daughter’s room from Target.
Meanwhile PETA has highlighted
affordable offerings from big-brand
stores such as down-free couches
from Ikea, hand-woven throws that
are sans wool from Crate & Barrel,
and vegan cotton and polyester
rugs from Anthropologie.
Lokitz co-runs a design com-
pany, Four + Four Design, with her
husband and another couple in
which they buy and refurbish
homes on the Eastside. She says
they have been able to avoid using
any animal-derived materials.
“We feel very fortunate and lucky
that we’re able to make that choice
of having the time to think about it,”
Lokitz said. She’s raised her girls,
now 5 and 8, vegan and is ecstatic to
see the interest in animal-friendly
living grow. “I feel like the awareness
in the world right now, especially
with the climate change, is really
pushing design.”
As for Zaki, though she says veg-
an design can be exhaustive and ex-
pensive, interest is strong enough
that for the upcoming L.A. Design
Festival, themed “future,” she plans
to have a panel dedicated to the
trend. She respects the imagina-
tion that vegan design involves and
says Los Angeles is home to an af-
fluent clientele that can afford to ex-
periment.
“L.A. has such a robust manu-
facturing community that if you can
think it up, you can figure out any
idea,” Zaki said. “If there’s any-
where where there are people who
are creative enough to figure vegan
design out, it’s here in L.A.”Vegan
beliefs
extend
into
decor
TATUM KENDRICK designed an interior free of animal materials for Little Pine, the vegan restaurant owned by musician Moby.Mel MelconLos Angeles TimesSteve ErleTHE LIVING ROOM, top, of the Kanal-Lokitz home contains a Living Divani sofa upholstered in
a Perennials fabric. Elsewhere in the home, above, is a custom sectional sofa in pink cotton velvet.Shade Degges[Vegan, from F1]
HAILY ZAKI, cofounder of L.A. Design Festival, with Evan
Rudin, whose family company, A. Rudin, makes faux leather.Wally SkalijLos Angeles Times‘Here is the
thing: If you
want something
to be vegan
design, you
need to pay for
it. And it’s
expensive.’
—HAILYZAKI,
cofounder of LA Design FestivalF6 LATIMES.COM
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOME & DESIGN