Beaux-Arts terracotta ornament frames the entrance arch of a 1920s office building on the corner of Olive Street and Fifth in Downtown Los Angeles — a facade so elaborately worked that the tall dracaena and columnar cacti flanking the door feel less like decoration than a continuation of the building's own botanical exuberance. That counterpoint between historic architecture and desert planting sets the terms for everything inside: the Proper Hotel Los Angeles, which opened in 2021 within the former Hamburger's department store building, gives Kelly Wearstler her most theatrically layered commission to date, the interiors moving between a coral-washed, hand-painted lobby corridor and 148 guest rooms furnished with an accumulated warmth that suggests a serious collector rather than a hotel decorator. Wearstler's signature is the productive collision of references — woven-check upholstered headboards paired with worn Oushak rugs, rush-seated dining chairs pulled up to oak tables beside checkered tile columns planted with full-canopy olive trees, rooftop loungers in broad stripe linen facing the downtown skyline across a Talavera-edged pool. The palette throughout runs from terracotta and sage to warm walnut and cream, grounded by wide-plank timber floors and a density of textiles that prevents any single surface from dominating. Where most hotel design resolves into a legible mood board, Wearstler's rooms at Proper sustain a productive tension — old and new, refined and rough — without ever quite settling.

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