Growing up, fashion designer Jerry Lorenzo’s father Jerry was an MLB coach and manager—for the White Sox and the Mets, among others—and instilled in him a reverence for teamwork. Today, it’s a guiding principle for how he runs his luxurious yet laid-back clothing label Fear of God. So, when Lorenzo, 44, was renovating his combined office, studio, and showroom—an airy loft located near the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles—he sought to create a space that fostered collaboration and open dialogue.
“I’m always thinking about the team and how we create an environment that brings the best out of everyone,” Lorenzo said one recent gray morning. “A place where the team can clearly see each other and work together, hold each other accountable.”
A meeting room is anchored by a large wooden table. “We wanted everything living honestly in its own form,” Lorenzo said. “The table isn’t painted, you know? Everything is honest to its purpose and nature of being.”
To help create the austere, airy design studio and offices, Lorenzo brought in a pair of talents to transform the structure, Relativity Architects who tackled the project’s overall overhaul, along with polymathic creative director and designer Willo Perron who handled the furniture and finishings. Perron is well known to aesthetes and brand builders for his myriad of high-profile projects—everything from designing the stores for American Apparel and Stussy to overseeing immersive, concert experiences for Drake, Kanye West, and Rihanna, among others.
Lorenzo is, of course, in the apparel business, and that’s ultimately a business of appearances. On this front, the studio delivers. To enter the building, just beyond an unassuming black façade off a busy thoroughfare, is to be met with vast, creamy, gray walls and striking, oversized furniture, all under monumental light boxes that cast everything in a pleasing glow; above it all is a bowstring truss wood ceiling. “I wanted a place that’s inspirational, that’s beautiful, that’s considered,” said Lorenzo, who established Fear of God in 2012. In some ways, the nearly 10,000 square-foot studio mirrors his clothing—elegant but clean, considered but unfussy.
