RH Montecito: The Old Firehouse Rekindled

On the evening of Thursday, December 12, an unveiling took place in the heart of our Upper Village. RH Montecito – The Gallery at the Old Firehouse opened its doors with a flourish and in poured a colorful sampling of gifted local burghers, noted interior designers, and other species of happy creative gravitas – all there to throw a follow spot on RH Montecito; a fungible museum of functional art. 

On a given day you may stroll RH Montecito’s cozy, glowingly homelike exhibits and sample, purchase, or admire what you will.While on the RH Montecito premises you may also partake of the reportedly delectable Fried Chicken Sandwich that awaits your designer flatware attack at the RH Firehouse Grill. We’re talking about a luxury lifestyle destination that sees home furnishings, cocktails, and whole grilled Branzino as birds of a feather. What an idea. 

The diaphanous layout – lushly staged living spaces, heritage olive trees, gaudy Birds of Paradise, crushed granite pathways, glass and steel French doors through which one may sashay into sun drenched, secluded gardens – may derail your struggle to recall exactly which Montecito Bath Cabinet you had your eye on when you walked into the place. Best of luck.

This immersive RH Gallery experience has long since elevated RH,radically rebranding and resurrecting its predecessor – a doorknob-and-sectional purveyor once called Restoration Hardware. This evening, RH Montecito has come to the Upper Village’s Old Firehouse, bouquet in hand, to meet us where we live. 

Lit from below by a bath of roseate light the color of an Egyptian sunset (you know what I mean), the 1931 Alexander Bertrand Harmer structure is a glowing amber palace this evening. It’s all very cinematic. Hand in hand, Judie and I jog as stylishly as possible across East Valley Road (to an imagined Michel Legrand soundtrack) and enter the melee. 

Inside, a sartorially varied mob sips Vesper Martinis and Patron Margaritas. The roar of happy conversation will ramp accordingly as the evening progresses, even as LA’s sinuously vibing Miramar infuses the warm, cavernous space with infrasonic BPMs you can feel in your viscera. The unreasonably delish gourmet bites – provided by otherworldly caterer/ genie Annie Campbell – are pristine fabulist miniatures; some of them as structurally mesmerizing as a thimble-sized Gehry. A mad celebration is afoot. The invitees are up to the moment. 

The incomparable polymath Victoria Jackson is here, recently of Godmothers in Summerland, as is Entertainment Executive Paul Haas, robustly greeted by Friedman. Moon Juice Founder Amanda Chantal Bacon, designers Birgit Klein and Martyn Lawrence Bullard, investor extraordinaire Sean Hecht – the curated guest list promises to send word of RH’s Montecito unveiling to the four corners of the locally enchanted forest, tonight’s swinging event happily benefitting The Montecito Firefighters’ Charitable Foundation. 

Through it all, our Gwyneth circulates with that inimitable cool that has been her embraceable aura since around the time of Shakespeare in Love (don’t get me started), her expression tonight – as always – on the cusp of frank amusement.

When Mr. Friedman shows up, the seas – to his great credit – do not part. A soft-spoken and knowledgeable member of the RH team had earlier in the evening fielded a few of Judie’s and my questions about the magnetically simple furnishings in one of the Gallery’s appointed rooms. Oh, and what sort of Titan is Mr. Friedman? we’d dared inquire. 

“When he talks to you, it isn’t show. You have his complete attention! He engages, and it’s real. I’ve never worked for anyone like him.” The guy’s tone of wonder says a lot about the corporate template RH and Friedman have been smashing with aplomb for some time now. 

Friedman is RH’s near-legendary CEO. He has planted these Galleries all over the world, and they range from Versailles-like style compounds to lightly gilded local majesty; our dear Old Firehouse, for instance. Tonight’s soirée is effectively Friedman’s Happening to command. But on arrival, he doesn’t swagger in ceremonially, neither does a hush befall the crowd. Friedman wades into the mix like someone’s dad on poker night, shaking hands all around, pointing at pals, laughing unguardedly. Yeah, he is in head-to-toe black.

“What is that?” 

Look, thousands of millions of years ago (bear with me) our home planet was a dumb hot rock – covered with raging, lifeless seas but otherwise not a particularly happening place. A bolt of lightning struck the heaving waters and in fairly short order we got Kate Hepburn, Poitier, Ella, Shakespeare, Cheever, Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, and shortbread cookies. What looks like a miracle is hardworking and fantastically implausible chemistry, slapped into wakefulness by a spark. 

So it is with a “company,” which is someone’s brainstorm made flesh through intensely fussy administrative hoo-ha and nutty infusions of capital. For all that, the thing will be a moribund slab of potential until visited by a lightning strike. In the corporate realm these lightning strikes are people. Here’s one named Gary Friedman.

Few, if any, American companies have been blessed with so apt a signifier as the “Restoration” in Restoration Hardware. This is thanks to Friedman, whose fearless restorative intuitions turned a querulous home furnishings company into an experiential global empire of luxury lifestyle fun. As is often the case, this storied corporate resuscitation was routinely blasted by the sage advisory blowback we’ll call “conventional corporate wisdom.”

In this piece I’ll forgo Mr. Friedman’s deep biographical details, which are so “come from behind” fantastical if you typed them into a screenplay, you would be considered a Frank Capra-adoring hack. 

So let’s start with Friedman’s alighting at the gates of Restoration Hardware – at the time of his entry some 23 years ago a four-alarm fire whose stock had plummeted 96%. Restoration Hardware at that time had been intermingling decorative domestic hardware and handsome furnishings with such whimsical, irony-seeking curiosa as the Acme Dog Biscuit Mix and Atomic Robot Man toy. It may not be an overstatement to say that Friedman was aghast on arrival. There are stories of the newly-installed CEO walking through one of their stores circa 2001, pointing at the merch and asking a clerk “What is that?” – and not rhetorically (it was an Aqua–Troll Sprinkler). Friedman had his work cut out for him. 

The New Old Firehouse

By the by, Friedman “restored” the place into RH, a cozily-lustrous lifestyle Gallery aglow with real stuff for the discriminating seeker of design simplicity in home goods. RH’s cornucopia of stylish and popular offerings grew so vast that only ~10% of what they carried could even be categorically repped on their collective brick+mortar sales floor. What to do? Expand and reinvent the sales floor. Lavishly.

It took some time, but now that eagle has not only landed in the middle of our enchanted village; RH Montecito – The Gallery at the Old Firehouse has pointedly adopted our village vibe. On Saturday the 14^th the giant Seussian scissors came out and a ribbon was cut. RH Montecito is open for business. But, um…is it a place to findthat perfect floor lamp and Italian Swivel Chair combo? A place to ruminatively roam lush gardens in sun-drenched midday quietude? Or is it a place to relax over a stupendous two Martini lunch by crackling fireplace?

Yup.