Gallery of Dreams

It’s the end of a workday and most folks have headed home, but the fifth floor of the Pacific Design Center is bustling with hammering, painting, hauling, draping and arranging as interior designers transform cubicles into exotic showrooms.

* Sally Drennon and Sigrid Insull are decorating the veranda of a Moroccan villa bedecked with fountains, paintings and serpentine Italian columns.

“It’s our fantasy of dining under the stars,” Drennon says.

* Stephen Stoner is packing polyester snow on to a Japanese ski lodge dripping with plastic icicles, an Oriental paper lantern lighting the elegant antique furniture of its cozy interior.

“It’s very kind of Zen,” he explains.

* Dean Kiser is adjusting the dramatic lighting on a sitting room suite that combines sturdy English teak furniture with the shutters and tent-like draping of colonial India.

“It’s as if Lord Mountbatten had returned from India and set up a hunting pavilion on his estate,” he says.

* Tommy Chambers is installing a Buddha statue before the red tapestry that dominates a small, serene nook.

“This is a spiritual retreat, it’s a little fantasy room,” he says, centering the statue carefully. “I’m doing it for me. It’s nice to have a vision and just make it happen, and we don’t get a chance to do this very often.”

These are just a sampling of the works in progress for Divine Design ’98. The sixth annual extravaganza--a marketplace of upscale furnishings and fashion--opens Friday at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

“This is a chance for designers to have some fun,” explains Stoner, co-chair of the event with Jack Lowrance and Richard Gaz. “It also speaks to the generosity of the design community that they donate so much time and money.”

It’s also a lot of work. Not only do designers and contractors contribute time and materials for the massive project, recruiting spouses, staff, friends and partners in the process, but the designers also come up with the many elegant decorator items in their own vignettes that are part of the ongoing silent auction during the week. (“We have to beg, borrow or steal, or break down and buy them ourselves,” one designer notes.)

“Lots of people return to the same space year after year,” says Christopher Racster, executive director of Divine Design. Although the project maintains year-round offices at the design center, the real work begins in the summer and intensifies during the fall. “We occupy two entire floors of the design center, rent-free, for almost three months.”

And although construction of the cubicles was completed two months ago, the finishing touches on most showrooms are a rush to the wire for the busy participants.

Last year’s event raised more than $1 million for Project Angel Food, which delivers hot meals to homebound men, women and children with AIDS, and for Design Industries Foundation Fight AIDS, commonly known as DIFFA, which supports AIDS organizations.

Although Divine Design has been a model for other cities, its scale has not been matched, and this year’s show is larger than ever, say sponsors, who have added a Dec. 11 live auction run by Sotheby’s. Auction items, which will be on view until Dec. 11, include an armoire designed by Kerry Joyce, a mid-16th century tapestry, a James Jennings dining table and a one-of-a-kind collectible Barbie.

The auction will conclude a week of hyper-shopping, the trademark of Divine Design.

On the seventh floor, visitors will find a 40,000-square-foot marketplace with designer label fashions and a home furnishing flea market with upscale furnishings and antiques.

And on the fifth floor, in a boulevard of fantasy vignettes, the 46 showcase rooms feature donated items for silent auction bidding during the week. More than 150 items--including accessories, dinnerware, draperies, framed art and home furnishings--are available for this year’s silent auction.

It’s a great place to get decorating ideas, say the sponsors, noting that the showcase vignettes offer everything from a New York penthouse to an Art Deco bathroom.

“The idea is for people to walk away with their imagination sparked for a home improvement idea or a total direction for redecorating their house,” says Racster.

For this year’s show, Racster says, the fifth-floor walls have been lightened and garden benches scattered about to give the area more of a gallery feeling.

“And I think the vignettes are even more elaborate,” he adds. “This is a chance for designers to be their own clients--we just give them the empty box, and they take it from there. People are really using them as fantasy projects this year.”

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Divine Design ‘98: a marketplace of furnishings and fashions.

* Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood.

* Friday opening night reception, awards show and “sneak peek” sales event: $250 (includes seven-day pass).

* Friday opening night sales event only: $100 (includes seven-daypass).

* Open daily to public Saturday to Dec. 11, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. One-day passes at $20 available at the door.

* Auction of selected upscale items, Dec. 11 at 7 p.m.

* Tickets and information: (310) 358-8000.

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Shopping Tips

* Divine Design is more than a good cause; it’s also one of the biggest bonanzas for discount gifts in town. For advice, see Friday’s special Holiday Gift Guide edition of SoCal Living.