Energetic and ingenious Vanessa De Vargas is an L.A.-based furniture designer and interior decorator, specializing in the restoration of heirloom and vintage furniture pieces. Her exquisite design label and interior design firm, Turquoise, is a reflection of the chic innovation that makes her work so unique within the market. She sells beautifully restored antiques; revamped for the modern client.
Her affection for vintage pieces and their handcrafted charm and impeccable construction has been prevalent since the beginning of her career as a decorator. Her love for the gilded glamour of former eras has inspired her to reconstruct and design world-class pieces that she updates with practical and yet chic details, so the pieces can extend to further generations without losing their design integrity. It is this personal and instinctive vision that has allowed her to become one of the most forthcoming and celebrated designers within the niche of vintage furniture restoration.
Training with the UCLA Extension Interior Design program and then becoming a freelance assistant with Los Angeles most talented designers, Vanessa found her niche by revamping mid-century and vintage pieces. Consigning with some of the biggest home décor stores in Los Angeles like Free Space Modern, Carol Kipling, Woodson and Rummerfield’s and The Red House Interiors, Vanessa then decided to open her own showroom called Turquoise, in Venice Beach. The store was housed in quant old Japanese style building from Abbot Kinney’s World Fair, and was the perfect showroom to display her treasures of the past. The store was a huge success selling to celebrities, design clients and other high-end designers, but Vanessa had to chose which career path she wanted to follow and later closed her store to focus on her passion of interior design.
Vanessa enjoys mixing old and new pieces together and that homes should feel lived in and reflect the clients’ taste as much as possible. Vanessa offers hourly consultations, full build outs, space planning, custom furniture options, color consultations and full home design services. “I feel everyone should be able to afford design. No job is too small or too big to handle”, Vanessa says.
To expand her interior design business to other parts of the United States Vanessa launched E-Decorating a few years ago. She is the first designer to offer a fully electronic type of design service for her out-of-state clients. With no paper to mail back and forth the service also serves as an eco-friendly solution to design. Please visit the E-Decorating page for more information on how to get started.
Embarking on her ninth homeless shelter project as a project manager and designer, De Vargas has teamed up with Pen + Napkin to re-decorate two apartments in the Glendale and Sun Valley area which are both decorated from private donations. These two families will call these apartments home for the first time. Vanessa organizes and combines Los Angeles’ most sought after design talent to create wonderful and safe spaces for the those who have nothing. Giving back to the community is something that Vanessa will always continue to do. The rewards are priceless.
You can also find sneak peeks to her ever changing and progressing projects on her blog, turquoise-la.blogspot.com and you can follow Vanessa on Twitter @TurquoiseLA and on Facebook at Turquoise, Pinterest and Instagram – TurquoiseLA
Vanessa has most recently worked as an interior stylist for Clevver Media, Urban Home Pablo Lighting and Dunn Edwards. She aslo was featured with Vanessa Kogevinas for a fun charity related shoot for GMC and Restore, to help a family with new furntiure for their home! Vanessa has shot with Yahoo!’s “Ultimate Surprises”, featured on an episode of “Design Wars” for HGTV, multiple HGTV webisodes for window treatments, Small Spaces Big Style, and has also co-hosted an episode for “Movie and A Makeover” for TBS.
Vanessa’s TALENT REEL is available for hosting and on camera design work, which you can view HERE.
Vanessa has spoken and hosted numerous design related events for such companies as Editor at Large, Pottery Barn, Effen Vodka, West Elm, Ford Chung, Baccarat Studio, HipSwap, Duralee, Flor and recently spoke in Boise Idaho for the “Chair Affair”. She has also been an invited to speak at different interior design related programs for FIDM and UCLA Extension for Interior Design.
Recent publications include, Cottages and Bungalows, Redbook, Woman’s Day, TRADHome, Lonny, Los Angeles Times, CA Home + Design, New York Times, Sunset Magazine, Washington Post, InStyle, Architectural Digest–Italy, Lucky, California Homes, Adore and Ivy and Piper. She has also been featured in many interior design coffee table books – The Designers Cookbook, Ecogolique, Apartment Therapy and CraveLA.