California’s Manhattan Beach hosted an eclectic cast of characters in the early 2000s, according to the designer Brett Robinson, who was born there in 1991. Throughout his youth, the 34-year-old would observe surfers, artists, and aerospace engineers—there’s a Northrop Grumman site nearby—mixing and mingling around El Porto, a popular beach community in the area. “It was this strange amalgamation of the most low-key people and the most high-key people,” he says.
That one-of-a-kind mixture directly influenced Robinson’s first furniture collection—of tables, chairs, sofas, and ottomans, called Halcyon—which was released under his brand, B G Robinson, in a public installation at the Just One Eye store, in Los Angeles, in September of 2022. Pieces such as his XF_8 table, in cast aluminum, merge maritime and aerospace aesthetics.
Now, for his second collection, he’s trying something totally different, pulling from his life post–Manhattan Beach. Described as “sensual, alien, and hauntingly pragmatic,” the series, which includes chairs, tables, sofas, and objets d’art, is inspired by the baroque, decadent homes of his cosmopolitan clients.
These new pieces will debut in the coming weeks at curator Ashlee Harrison’s private salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Having work shown in a space that also exhibits names such as Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol is an achievement for any artist, let alone one so new to the industry. But Robinson’s interest in design began long before he launched his business. “My mom would always get pissed because I’d take apart our phone,” he says, laughing. “Taking things apart was always a hobby of mine—just to see how things are actually made.”
It wasn’t until he left Orange County, graduating from San Clemente High School in 2009 and making the move north to San Francisco State University (S.F.S.U.), that his passion for art solidified. “I had never really left Orange County or Southern California,” he says.
Living in San Francisco was “the first time I didn’t feel like the most important person in the world,” Robinson adds. He immersed himself in food, culture, and, especially, art. He still remembers the afternoon he first saw a piece by Ruth Asawa in the window of an art gallery. “[It was] the most beautiful sculpture I’d ever seen in my entire life.”
As Robinson’s interest in art and design grew, his desire to graduate waned; after three years of studying political science at S.F.S.U., he dropped out in 2012 and moved to Los Angeles.
Robinson landed a job working retail at Ralph Lauren’s Melrose Avenue outpost, Double RL. “Back then, it was the coolest store in the world,” he says. After less than a year at the shop, he met Alfredo Paredes, the former executive vice president and chief creative officer of the brand, who today runs his own design studio. Paredes was impressed by Robinson’s eye for detail and invited him to interview for a corporate position in New York. He got the job, and by the beginning of 2013 he was living in the East Village.
Despite a steep learning curve, the new position—in which Robinson would help design Ralph Lauren stores around the world—taught him how “to be an adult.” But while on the job, he became fascinated by interior design, specifically furniture. He had found his passion—so once again Robinson shifted course, leaving Ralph Lauren in 2015 to start his own, independent furniture brand.
He spent his first few years balancing prototype production with commercial projects, such as helping to design chef Flynn McGarry’s Lower East Side restaurant, Gem, which opened in February of 2018.
To develop his prototypes, he taught himself how to weld, working out of his automotive-designer friend Tanner Boyes’s shop, in Utah.
“People reacted really well” to his early work, says Robinson, while others “didn’t react at all—which I thought was a good sign. The pieces made people contemplate.”
Robinson unveiled his Halcyon collection, which quickly saw success, allowing him to “deal with some really interesting, successful people” and visit buyers’ homes “that were more incredible than I could ever imagine.” In many houses, he found it shocking that his pieces would stand alongside “some of the best art collections in the world.”
“It made me want to build something that’s even more ostentatious,” he says.
Yet the young designer was also deeply aware that “the second season of any TV show is always the hardest. It’s always bad when they try to rush it into production.” So, instead, he took his time.
Three years later, Robinson is ready to introduce Palace Intrigue. “The idea around it is sort of hyper-Baroque, Art Deco–inspired, pharaonic,” he says. Think “Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom.”
Palace Intrigue is meant to express a bygone era of noblesse oblige, in which art flourished under the patronage of the ruling class. Still, his driving force is an object’s ability to have a profound effect. “That’s humanity at its best, right? When we make things that make others feel. When you hear Vivaldi or Mozart, or even Radiohead,” he says. “I want to be able to make something that makes people feel like that, too.”
Brett Robinson’s second collection, Palace Intrigue, will be on view at Ashlee Harrison’s appointment-only private salon in Manhattan. To schedule a visit, e-mail info@ashleeharrison.com
Jack Sullivan is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL
