West Elm’s Creative Director Goes Mad For Mod

By Emily Hsieh
March 18, 2010

Alex Bates is having a major mod moment. As the creative director and Senior Vice President of contemporary home brand West Elm, Bates is constantly on the hunt for design inspiration—and hit the jackpot recently at her local movie theater. “I’m really into the '60s right now. I’m fixated on [Director] Tom Ford’s "A Single Man." The aesthetic is so crazy! And then I saw "Nine." And "An Education." They’re all set around the exact the same time in the early '60s, back when everything—from the profiles of the cars to the vases—felt more restrained and so chic.”

As the driving force behind West Elm's coolly minimalist look and feel, Bates, not surprisingly, found the elegant, understated films quite appealing. “Our pieces go well with cool antiques. We’re doing a mix of modern, vintage, and industrial at West Elm—that’s where my head is at,” says Bates, who gamely agreed to comb eBay for items that sum up her current state of mind.

“I went off on all things '60s, black, white and grey and started fantasizing about stripping all the color out of my house in Fire Island,” the New York-based designer explained, surveying the black and white abstract painting and smoke-hued iced tea glasses that ended up on her list. “We’re going back into a color phase at West Elm right now, but when you work with color all day, you want a relief of neutrals at home.”

In terms of rooting out treasures on eBay, Bates is something of an expert. “I used to be a total eBay junkie. I had to try to wean myself off—little packages would arrive at my house constantly,” she says. A passionate collector of everything from vintage silver (“It’s a disease!” Bates laughs), to black Basalt Wedgwood china to brown and white transferware to sugar shakers (“I just love the forms”), she admits, “I’m kind of a magpie.” To get to what she wants on eBay, Bates’ process is “a combination of deliberateness and happy accidents. I definitely go in with intent—I might plug in something like ‘60’s Edward Wormley’—but from there you might find a well-edited seller that leads you to many other unexpected discoveries. It’s a lot like following a great trail of blogs.”

Expounding on the significance of the right search terms, Bates says that pinpointing an era is most useful: “The decade and the years are really important. I found a lot of the stuff here by searching under the three year span from 1960-1962.” By contrast, Bates says, “’vintage’ is a really bad word. There’s no filter—it could mean anything from the 80’s or the 20’s.”

And once you find a great seller, hang on. “You can tell who the good, well informed ones are as soon as you start asking questions. When I was building my collection of transferware I struck up a relationship with an amazing dealer who had an incredible wealth of knowledge. I would tell her I was looking for an 8” bowl and she’d track it down for me,” Bates recalls. “Back in the early 80’s my husband and I were collecting Shaker quilts and going down to Maryland and Pennsylvania on the weekends to find more. And that’s what eBay has become: it’s like a cyber antique market, with all the same great dealers and finds only now you can shop from home in your PJs.”

Here, a taste of Bates’ current inspirations:

1. Antique Wood Industrial Rolling Rack (buy it now price, $1175) “Perfect for organizing my overflowing stacks of magazines and books.”

2. 60’s Eames Era Mid Century Modern Abstract Painting (sold for $50) “Good strong punch for the walls. [I'm] pretending in my head it’s really an unsigned David Smith like I saw all over the Armory show the other weekend.”

3. Machine Age Era Metal Drafting Stools (buy it now price, $195) “These stools are perfect for the kitchen. [I] love the mix of industrial with 60’s chic.”

4. 1958 Chris Craft Continental (winning bid, $10,111) “My dream boat: this little 1959 Chris Craft would be perfect for a day of waterskiing followed by sunset cocktails on Fire Island.”

5. Vintage Wedgwood Basalt Sugar Bowl (winning bid, $24.95) “Wedgwood Basalt pieces look surprisingly modern—Josiah [Wedgwood] was so ahead of his time. This would be beautiful filled with flowers or cocktail nibbles.”

6. Wedgwood Basalt Jug With Rope Handle (starting bid, $69.95) and 7. Russel Wright Morgantown Iced Tea Glasses (buy it now price, $110 for set of four) “I really like the simplicity of this shape. This would mix well with the Russel Wright smoke glasses.”

8. Wedgwood Queen Elizabeth Black Basalt Bust (buy it now price, $279.99) and 9. Wedgwood Prince Philip Black Basalt Bust (buy it now price, $279.99) “How can one resist these Wedgwood busts of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to use as bookends? Great with a stack of vintage Cecil Beaton books from the 60’s”

10. Edward Wormley for Dunbar Chairs (buy it now price, $3800) “These Dunbar chairs would look great mixed with the industrial shelf and walnut table.”

11. Eero Saarinen For Knoll Tulip-Based Walnut Coffee Table (buy it now price, $1495) “There’s so much one learns from looking at a beautifully proportioned table like this one—the forms and the grace and their vocabulary can help train your eye. Love how this would work with the white chairs, Basalt, and black glass.”

12. The Best of Beaton (buy it now price, $300), 13. Beaton In The Sixties by Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (buy it now price, $8.99), 14. The Unexpurgated Beaton (buy it now price, $13.94) “I’ve been collecting all these old Cecil Beaton books for years. The dust jacket art is incredible, and besides being amazing reads, they look great on coffee tables, stacked up on bookshelves, or you can even frame the covers as art. ”

**Images of West Elm merchandis (above, right) and Alex Bates provided by West Elm.**

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