There are some beautiful homes that are beautiful because they were built by a skilled architect; others, thanks to interiors crafted by a hired decorator. And then there are the beautiful homes that became beautiful because of the vision of those who lived there.
In the latter camp falls the Venice, California, home of Kendall and Ben Knox. It’s a 1914 Craftsman home constructed just as Los Angeles began to sprawl: In the 1920s, the then burgeoning film industry set up shop in the Southern California city due to the weather, abundance of land, and cheap labor. Yet while mansions arose in Beverly Hills and châteaux on Sunset Boulevard, the Knoxes believe that some young couple ordered a mail order home from a Sears Catalogue that they assembled themselves. Over a century later, Kendall and Ben moved in right after their honeymoon in France.
There were many charming things about the house (front porch, wood-burning fireplace). There were also many not-so-charming things (veneer wood, spotty landscaping). So they got to work. They repainted the walls but didn’t mask all the old chips, which Kendall argues gives the house character: “People might’ve dinged their surfboard as they’re coming through,” she says, waving her hands. “We want it to feel like it’s in California.” They raised the ceiling, replaced the floors, and sourced furniture from anywhere and everywhere—from Indonesia to Greece, France to Facebook Marketplace. And slowly but surely they made the home their own.
“In my mind, it’s part French maison but then also a little beach shack,” Kendall says of her home as I sit at her weathered wood dining table. She’s made breakfast: yogurt and granola, cold brew coffee with oat milk, fresh strawberries and croissants from Gjelina. Everything goes right on the wood. Kendall, I soon learn, is very anti-coaster: “We don’t put coasters down because I want to be able to see who’s been here before. And the table wants to remember the people that it’s helped share conversations. So the more rings, the better,” she says.
Kendall speaks like someone with definitive taste, because she is. In 2021, she cofounded the Los Angeles–based Olive Ateliers along with Ben and Laura Sotelo. In its broadest definition, Olive Ateliers lifestyle company that sources vintage and antique objects from around the world, many of which are available for purchase at their sprawling Downtown warehouse. Yet Olive Ateliers is almost ruthless in the specificity of its curation: Everything—whether it is an oil painting or a limestone trough turned fountain—is seen through a patinated Southern California–meets–South of France lens and has an old soul. Colors are calming neutrals, textiles light and breathable, woods weathered. “It’s an indoor-outdoor style of living,” says Ben. In late September, they launched a self-designed furniture collection, called Lieu De Vie. “It’s rooted in French farm style, which is very core to who we are as a brand,” Kendall says. “We’re designing everything to be used and to arrive to you with a feeling that, in a way, it already has. You’re not afraid to use it or to put it in practice in your home.”
You’d probably get a little bored if I tried to list all their celebrity clients, so I’ll just run through some highlights: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, Sofia Richie, Margot Robbie, almost every single Karjenner, and Jeremy Allen White, to name just a few. (The latter asked if he could smoke a cigarette in their warehouse while shopping for outdoor furniture.) You’ll also get bored if I list all their decorator clients. So I’ll just say several of them are on the AD100 List.
Although—no disrespect to any of the above—the couple admits they might have treated themselves to first pickings of their carefully sourced stash on occasion. On their porch sits an Italian church pew, and in their yard you’ll find rare Willy Guhl planters. Bedrooms, meanwhile, feature vintage French armoires.
There’s a youthful, stylish scrappiness to their home: The baby books in the nursery of their son, Rhodes, are Ben’s from his own childhood. Meanwhile, their “toile” wallpaper is a trick of the eye: Kendall found a $5 stamp from Etsy, painted it with Farrow and Ball Stiffkey Blue, and hand-applied it to the wall herself. (Also from Etsy? A 1940s Swedish floor lamp in the living room.)
Then there’s their butter yellow kitchen. They deliberately left some cabinets doorless, after seeing the casual style in the South of France: “Every kitchen that we loved had just simply had pots and pans behind a piece of curtain. I thought, That’s just the cutest, most attainable thing ever. Just do that. I don’t have to build a whole thing,” she says. Instead, they hung French linens with Soviet-era hospital clips. Ben shrugs when I comment on the miraculousness of that find: Clips? Scoured from Cold War–era Russia? “You can get hundreds and thousands of them if you wanted to,” he says.
Some other fascinating accents? A vintage piano keyboard that appears straight out of a Depression-era dive bar, an Alice Palmer and Co. pendant, an antique French limestone mantel, and a vintage Jenny Lind bassinet.
And that’s what makes their home more aspirational than others you might have seen with more square footage or lots of fancy furniture: Every object, every chair, every frame leaves you wondering not only “Where did you get that?” but “Should I get that too?”
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