Deborah Sussman is definitely “the first designer to be honored in a ping pong social club,” as she noted during her acceptance speech, but definitely not the last. The diminutive design dynamo was honored last Friday by Wiles Magazine and the Los Angeles Design Festival as the inaugural recipient of the Julia Morgan ICON Award.
The event can best be described as colorful in the best of ways, starting with Ms. Sussman’s bright magenta scarf (which is symbolic of her masterful use of color in all of her work) to the crimson glow of SPiN itself. Ms. Sussman’s friends and peers as well as many organizers of other LADF events mingled over cocktails, nosh, and ping pong. The mix of creative people who came out to honor Ms. Sussman was almost as eclectic as the honoree herself and a precisely the reason that Los Angeles is such a global design capital.
Ms. Sussman captivated the crowd with her acceptance speech, which started with those eternal words of wisdom, “Women of the West, you are what you eat, and what you wear.” From behind her trademark glasses and green eyeliner, Ms. Sussman has watched the design industry continue to evolve. She is truly a Los Angeles design renaissance woman who has played a key role in forging her own path, as well as breaking new boundaries for generations of designers to come. The Julia Morgan ICON Award recognizes her for her tenacious creativity, fearless expression of her art, and for leading by design and by example.
LADF also announced their first three members of their board. The Getty‘s Managing Director of Pacific Standard Time, Gloria Gerace, Dwell magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Amanda Dameron, and KCRW host, author, and curator Frances Anderton will be joining the LADF board, helping to shape and build the Los Angeles Design Festival moving forward.
The simple award was crafted by local design studio Know How Shop with tailoring techniques similar to what the Eames used in a lot of their bent plywood furniture, especially the leg splint. Conceptually, a darted square of plywood cutout of a larger piece, acting as the traditional “frame” for the award. But the award itself becomes a object in space rather than a flat sheet behind the frame.
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