Palm Springs Swings

American Way Magazine
Excerpt from October, 2002

Palm Springs Swings

Excerpt by Elaine Glusac

There’s a resurgent cool quotient to Palm Springs these days, thanks to an influx of hip new hotels, restaurants, shops, and nightclubs. That was just warming up a couple years ago is now sizzling. Welcome to what many are calling the next South Beach.

No Johnny-come-lately, Palm Springs, California, was the daddy of retro back before it was retro and was just plain modern (think Ocean’s Eleven). Modernist architects like Albert Frey, Richard Neutra, and Rudolf Schindler built this town in the stripped-down steel-and-glass style of the mid-20th century, when Palm Springs drew a Hollywood hive counting Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra among its buzz.

Here it idled as more lavish developments encamped down the Coachella valley in communities like Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and Indian Wells. The stars found other orbits and retirees filed in for the year-round golf-perfect weather. Equated with bad suburban strip malls, modernism languished until the fashion crowd began to rediscover the area’s verve a few years ago.

Now, much like Miami’s South Beach, a potent mix of fashion and architecture has sparked another wave of renaissance in Palm Springs. More the 25 new shops, galleries, and eateries have popped up in the trendy Uptown Heritage District in the last year. The design and investment crowds have snapped up smart little modernist vacation homes, luring a new generation of glitterati back to the desert. The average age of residents dropped from 50-something to 40-something. In short order, GQ set up photo shoots, Brad and Jennifer showed up, and real estate prices shot up.

“Palm Springs is as much about being out on the pool deck as inside the room,” says Christy Eugenis, owner with husband Stan of the newcomer Orbit In’s Oasis. To furnish it, she trolled the now-hot Palm Springs resale shops like Modern Way, depository of the wealthy’s redecorating cast-offs. Isamu Noguchi coffee tables, and Harry Bertoia diamond chairs outfit the Orbit’s rooms, boasting evocative names like Leopard Lounge and Atomic Paradise. Mixed with George Nelson bubble lamps and balances fitted with Ray and Charles Eames atomic prints, the effect is truly transporting. At cocktail hour, guests throw open their doors to gather around the boomerang-shaped pool bar, where the lava-lamps-cum-dataports intensify as light seeps from the sky.

And Christy Eugenis’ newly opened second hotel, Orbit In’s Hideaway, feature vintage-faithful rooms and a vast, pool-centered yard in a rehabbed property that inspired Architectural Record in 1948 to note, “Its design contemplates a commune-with -nature type of holiday, where a swim and a sun bath are the doctor’s prescription.” Throw a couple of martinis into the mix, and you have today’s Palm Springs potion.