Holiday in the Hills
Written By Robert Leleux | Photography by Patrick Cline | Art Direction by Michelle Adams
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Designer and author Mark D. Sikes celebrates the season with easygoing, Southern California grace.
The kitchen abounds with topiaries and flowering plants.
Throughout all my projects,” says Mark D. Sikes, “I work to make the new feel old, to add layers of patina and age.” The designer’s appreciation for classic, all-American good taste is on abundant display throughout the 1920s home in the Hollywood Hills that he shares with his partner, Michael Griffin. In the brief two-and-a-half years they’ve lived there, Sikes has managed to fashion the kind of cultivated interior that seems to have developed over generations. “It doesn’t feel like a ‘decorated’ house,” he says. “It’s very organic and open. In fact, that’s the first change I made to the house after we bought it. I had all the doors rehung to open out.”
This indoor-outdoor lifestyle is indicative of Southern California, but it also suggests the homes of two of Sikes’ role models, Oscar de la Renta and Bunny Williams. “Their homes in the Dominican Republic have made a huge impression on my sense of style,” he says. Like Sikes’ mediterranean-style home, De la Renta’s and Williams’ island residences boast an easygoing grace that appears utterly uncontemplated but is, in reality, created through the application of great talent and care. This type of aesthetic steeliness—the refusal to deviate from an assiduously developed style statement—is a recurring theme of Sikes’ popular blog, where he frequently celebrates those designers and artists, such as Katharine Hepburn and Carolina Herrera, who’ve stuck to their guns.
When it comes to decorating for the holidays, Sikes and Griffin believe, they say, in “keeping with our own sensibility, our green and white theme.” “Fresh ficuses are delivered every three weeks; orchids arrive once a month. That’s how we live year-round,” says Sikes. “I don’t believe in changing my point of view just because of the calendar. We create festive holiday celebrations, but we do them our way, according to the taste of our house.”
I don’t believe in changing my point of view just because of the calendar. We create festive holiday celebrations, but we do them our way, according to the taste of our house.
Sikes’ breakfast table—set with cobalt-blue glasses, Spode dishware, and simple woven placemats—conveys cool, continental charm.
The kitchen is touched up for Thanksgiving, with potted herbs, rosemary topiaries, and white bowls filled with pears, clementines, and apples. We find that the combination of green-and-white flowers and herbs in terra-cotta pots with our blue-and-white collections creates a perfect kitchen scene for the holidays.
Blue-and-white Portuguese tile lends color and refinement to a powder room’s interior.
Loosely stacked design books, tucked beneath an antique Chippendale console, lend a smartly tousled touch to swank surroundings.
In Sikes’ expansive foyer, glass vases filled with paperwhites and eucalyptus leaves adorn an antique Asian-style table paired with a whimsical stool. Such inspired combinations of high and low design elements recur throughout the home’s relaxed decor.
Organic elements—such as rattan club chairs, a woven basket, and an abaca rug—suggest an atmosphere of Caribbean ease, enlivening the room’s decorous antiques.
On a faux-tortoiseshell-and-brass cocktail table designed by Oscar de la Renta, a collection of antique bone and ivory boxes creates a lush, textured tablescape.
“We always serve Thanksgiving dinner in the formal dining room on Michael’s grandmother’s china,” Sikes says.
We order Thanksgiving dinner from our favorite gourmet marketplace, Joan’s on Third. It's delicious, and the ease of ordering and picking up the day before allows for more time to decorate and to entertain the guests we don’t get to see very often throughout the year.
Maximizing the residence’s abundant natural light, Sikes’ gracious holiday table is accented with gleaming mercury glass.
“For Thanksgiving, we make some subtle alterations to our green-and-white theme,” says Sikes. “The eucalyptus stays, and the white orchids get scaled back in the dining room. We place white pumpkins of all sizes on the dining table, and we add myrtle topiaries and lots of mercury glass: votives, vases, hurricanes, and bowls. The mercury glass vases are filled with green and white veronicas and stars-of-Bethlehem.”
With its deep brown walls, crisp linens, and flowing draperies, the guest bedroom offers a warm and welcoming retreat.
The bedroom’s french doors open onto a private balcony reminiscent of the Riviera.
“Throughout the year, we keep it simple when it comes to flowers by sticking to green and white, with large vases of eucalyptus, potted white orchids, and white hydrangeas,” Sikes says. “Although during peony season, pink peonies are everywhere.”
At Christmastime, we take it a step further. The white pumpkins and myrtle topiaries are dismissed, the mercury glass sticks around, and we add potted paperwhites, potted white amaryllis, and lots and lots of potted Christmas trees in varying sizes. These simple and chic decorations, mixed with plenty of bayleaf garlands, eucalyptus, and evergreens tied with olive-colored satin ribbon, create a festive and elegant Christmas.
A large, modern artwork provides the guest room’s traditional decor with a dynamic tribal counterpoint.
A striped cotton rug adds texture and dimension to the room’s neutral furnishings.
The bathroom’s unconventional fittings—such as its supple camel-colored shower curtains, vintage rattan tripod table, and black-and-white photography—impart old-world civility to a small, utilitarian space.
Porcelain and polished nickel glisten against the guest bathroom’s suave black walls.
Beneath a shadowbox mirror designed by the legendary Bunny Williams (one of Sikes’ idols), a lustrous chinoiserie chest boasts a glimmering vignette.
A billowing blue canopy bed supplies an elegant focal point in the serene primary bedroom.
Upholstered in rich earth tones, Sikes’ sophisticated study provides an ideal spot to contemplate an upcoming design project.
Given Los Angeles’ temperate winters, Sikes and Griffin’s tiered, Italian-style garden provides a restful, year-round retreat, just outside the breakfast room.
“We filled our outside gardens with ficus, white hydrangea, boxwoods, white roses, and white wisteria,” Sikes explains, “and fig ivy grows around the white stucco walls of our home.”