Immediately after interior designer Alexandra Azat ran barefoot out of her Altadena home, whisking her two young children and Great Dane to her car to outrun the blazes that would ultimately destroy her home and her design studio, she began texting clients. “My brain always lives in professional mode. It’s my toxic trait. I love what I do,” she says.

While most clients expressed their concern, and one dropped off clothes for her family, there were also those who just wanted to make sure their projects would stay on target. “Which is also fine! Honestly, I’m a business. This is what we do,” says Azat, founder and principal of Plaster & Patina. “It’s not personal. And we carry on.”

It’s been six weeks since the Eaton and Palisades wildfires swept through Los Angeles, becoming the second- and third-most destructive fires in California history, respectively. While American attention may have strayed to other calamities and the onslaught of fundraisers has subsided, the area’s design community, from indie retailers to design firms, are moving forward—even as they are still reeling from loss themselves.

The First Wave
In the fires’ immediate aftermath, plenty of businesses threw out support via proceeds from sales, or promoting “I Heart LA” T-shirts or jewelry. But decor retailers and the design industry, perhaps due to their dedication to the home, dug deeper. There were digital auctions of donated art and home objects, such as the ones organized by lighting and furniture designer Tristan Louis Marsh and the exhibition series Object Permanence, and the ad hoc compiling and boosting of home resources for affected families, such as this Google Sheet. Then there was the free stuff: mattresses from Avocado, cribs from Babyletto, bedding from Boll & Branch, cookware from Great Jones. The Los Angeles–based window treatment brand Everhem handed out free shades, drapery and hardware from their showroom, while Nest Bedding gave pillows and comforters to shelters housing the newly homeless. Meanwhile, star designers like Brigette Romanek offered complimentary consultations to those who’d lost their homes, via the Rebuild Hotline launched by The Expert.

And in the Old Pasadena shopping district, shops like Hömage and Another Man’s Treasure opened their doors to collect and distribute donations. “We are a close group of independent shops, so everyone did what they could to pull together,” says Carrie Davich, the owner of Maude Woods, who contributed donations to those neighboring shops and citywide initiatives. While Davich’s own home and store were safe, she was closed for a week, and the lingering smoke kept customers away for even longer. “It is starting to feel a little more normal,” she reports, “but things are still off a bit.”

Designer Joe Lucas, who operates his showroom Harbinger in West Hollywood, brought in donations of his own. “We started to organize that and immediately got such a large response that it was actually overwhelming,” says Lucas. In late January, he combined his efforts with that of the Soft Landing Project from design firm House of Honey and designer Adam Hunter’s LA Can Do. Tamara Kaye-Honey, the principal of House of Honey, began her initiative by opening a pop-up boutique of freebies in her own studio, five miles from the center of the fires. After distributing donations to 300 families in the first week, her team got access to a warehouse in downtown L.A. and began gathering more; as of press time, LA Can Do x Soft Landing Project had over 7,000 pieces set to be allotted, though the organization was forced to close up their distribution list when the demand became too high.

Kaye-Honey is also offering free hourlong consultations through the Rebuild Hotline, and has begun working with families who plan to rebuild. “What we have learned is that the time to start is now, so that your design is ready and permitted when the building receives a green light,” she says. Even clients whose houses didn’t burn down need extensive work done—smoke damage alone can be devastating. “Many need to replace [the home’s] entire contents,” she says. “We are already involved in helping clients with furnishing their new rentals, and replacing items for those who intend to return home when it is safe to do so.”

One designer has found a way to combine consultations, donations and emotional support: Alex Spielman, an interior designer whose L.A.-based studio The Little Things specializes in kids’ rooms, set out to help parents source and replace their children’s beloved blankets, feeding chairs or stuffed animals. For one child, her vendor Eventide Pennant Co. kindly remade a pennant with his name on it; for a set of twins, she had the bedding for their custom, non-standard-size cribs remade thanks to the vendors Gooselings and Namay Samay. “Surprisingly, it was the smaller, independent companies that responded the most enthusiastically, [and were] eager to support and give back in a meaningful way,” says Spielman.

Still, the most tender moments have come from hunting down objects slightly outside the usual designer purview. “The most common requests we’ve received have been for discontinued or retired stuffed animals and toys,” says Spielman. “Remarkably, we’ve been able to track down all of them through eBay and Etsy, which has been an incredibly rewarding experience.”

The Long Road Ahead
Delivering small moments of comfort was crucial in the first few weeks of shock. Now, the design community is digging in for the grinding realities of insurance hell and the maze of red tape they and their clients will face this year. “The cleanup is going to take six months to a year in most of those areas, just environmentally and logistically and health-wise,” says Lucas. “I think we’ll be making another round of help and initiatives as people get into the building process, and see who didn’t have insurance and who needs more help. I was telling our fabric vendors, ‘People aren’t going to have the brain power to select five yards of fabric. They don’t even have chairs.’”

Insurance hell is certainly where Azat finds herself now. Her firm’s studio space, which she’d only completed six months ago, was destroyed, along with a large shipment of European antiques bound for the primary suite of the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts, and her staff has no place to work or receive replacements. “I am being forced to commit to an office space without knowing if insurance will cover it because it takes weeks to get a response and months to actually get a check,” she says. Her insurance company has also requested she provide documents for the lease, images, renovation plans and contractor spec pricing for the new space. “All of which takes a lot of time, and throughout all of that time, we are unaware as to whether we will be receiving any sort of [financial] support or not.”

Additionally, many clients have needed to postpone projects slated to begin in Q1 of this year, delaying projections and creating a lull in cashflow. “I am a numbers girl. For me, analyzing the numbers is of the utmost importance prior to making any sort of major decision for my business,” says Azat. “This is the very first time in my entire career that I have not had all of the information I need to make a sound decision. … Attempting to not overanalyze is requiring great emotional efforts on my part.”

One bright light is that Azat and her firm have received an influx of interest from new clients. “I have no choice but to kick it into second gear to try to make up for my losses,” she says. As with the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s an uneasy truth that this tragedy will likely eventually lead to new work for the home industry.

That new work will have a new complication: how to protect homes from the next fire. Kaye-Honey anticipates another layer of consideration in the construction process in Southern California. “We will definitely be working arm in arm with our architect partners to implement more fire-retardant and fire-resistant details into home design as we work with clients to rebuild safety,” she says.

The hills of work ahead can seem unscalable. But Azat’s ongoing ordeal has actually bolstered the passion she has for her business. “We are not simply sourcing and buying items for our clients—we are creating home, and I believe that is truly important work,” she says. “Now more than ever, I am seeing how incredibly fundamental it is to us as humans to have that safe haven that is just for us. I am feeling more fulfilled than ever in my work, and more connected than ever to my amazing clients—all of whom have invited me to live with them!”