“It was everything we wanted. Everything exactly as we had written down five years ago.”
Neva Sofa, Sixpenny; Vintage Pillow, Shoppe Amber Interiors; Fireplace Pull Up Chair, Nickey Kehoe; Rug, Lawrence of La Brea; Small Narrow Pleat Porcelain Light, DeVol.
On Lacy and Teddy: Rudy Jude.
Right: Astier De Villatte Daisy Pendant Light, Nickey Kehoe.
the
City life was
never really for Lacy Phillips.
In 2019, she had been living in Los Angeles’s Echo Park for a decade as a self-described manifestation expert and cohost of the popular podcast Expanded.
What Phillips loves most is the simple beauty of the natural world and how it interacts with the home. She is especially fond of the way the light moves through the house throughout the day. “It’s so beautiful,” she says. “It makes its way to the kitchen. It works with us, almost as if it’s on our schedule.” Kingery is a prolific gardener, and they have transformed much of the abutting yard into a garden, filled with greens and vegetables to keep the donkeys, rabbits, and alpacas fed. Even the compost goes to the chickens. “My next manifestation, when my partner will let me, is to get a pig,” Phillips says, “because you can feed them any kind of food. Then we’ll truly be totally no waste.” Knowing Phillips, it’s bound to happen.
With such thoughtfulness, newer details—like the Douglas fir kitchen cabinets and matching open shelves—look as though they always belonged. And mixed with Phillips’s signature style of blending periods and places (the dining table is a French antique; the colorful afghan rug in her children’s bedroom is an Etsy find), the house offers a sense of charmful patina.
The same went for the 1900s-era claw-foot bathtub, which she found at a salvage yard in Pasadena. Phillips imagined something identical to the tub at Manka's Inverness Lodge, a property whose integration of indoor and outdoor deeply inspired how she conceived of her own home. A 15-foot custom cedar pool that converts into a hot tub in the colder months now sits alongside a bench from Jalan Jalan, an importer of Indonesian wood furniture, statuary, and more—adding a dash of California glamour to the property’s otherwise rustic sensibility.
Phillips spent countless hours scouring antiques sellers, vintage shops, and salvage yards for sconces, hardware, window latches, and other details to bring the cabin back to its original glory. Her prized find was a 1930s O’Keefe & Merritt stove, which she wanted to match to an old farmhouse one that Kingery’s aunt has at her home on Vashon Island in Washington State. “We found one from this 80-year-old woman who had completely refurbished it, and when she handed it off to us, she was crying, saying that her grandmother cooked so many meals on it. I told her, ‘It’s going to the most cherished and beloved house; we’re going to continue the love for it,’” Phillips recalls.
The property also needed work in order for Phillips and her growing family to actually live there. She wanted to keep the spirit of the original hunting cabin, where, in the 1930s, the large stone fireplace was used to cook food and warm the entire house (which was then a single room), and the outhouse was the only source of plumbing. Nearly every contractor told her the fireplace would have to go, but she stuck to her guns, eventually finding someone who carefully patched it up. The outhouse, though, didn’t stay; they transformed it into an outdoor shower with a bathtub, adding a luxurious tented area as a guest bedroom. The 1970s Tuff shed became Phillips’s office, while they amended what had been a converted porch into a primary bedroom with a bathroom, as well as a custom daybed to provide extra storage.
There were a few things that were never on their wish list, like the rattlesnakes that freely roam the mountains and craggy foothills that overlook the California coast. The couple has a young daughter, and at the time Phillips was pregnant with their second child. Her father, a cowboy, recommended that the family get a cat to help with the problem. But they kept finding the cat in the trees, with a coyote lurking below. Such began an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie–like string of events: They bought a donkey to scare off the coyotes. “And then we just kind of accepted that we were already in it, so we decided to go for it with the alpacas and the chickens!” says Phillips. They now own, in addition to the above, five dogs, two Flemish rabbits, and a beehive.
But five years passed and they were still living in the city. “I hit my ceiling,” she recalls. “I said to Max: ‘I’m moving to Topanga. You can stay in Echo Park. We don’t have to be together, but I’m out of here.’” Kingery, who founded the eco-conscious, gender-neutral clothing line Olderbrother, suggested they go house hunting that weekend. They looked at only two properties and made an offer the same day. “It was everything we wanted,” Phillips says of the rustic 1,800-square-foot hunting cabin, dated to 1934, situated on an acre of land. “Everything exactly as we had written down five years ago.”
(The founder of manifestation platform To Be Magnetic, she began to hone her gift of claircognizance in her 20s, after struggling as an actor and model.) So naturally, at one point she, along with her partner, Max Kingery, wrote down everything they wanted in an older house in Topanga Canyon, from hardwood floors to high ceilings—a manifestation list, you might say.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Justin Chung
WORDS BY Thessaly La Force
STYLING BY Merisa Libbey
VIDEOGRAPHY BY Thomas Kovacik
CANYON
of
Lady
Manifestation expert Lacy Phillips made a list of everything she wanted in a home in Topanga Canyon. Unsurprisingly, her plan all came together—plus a
few alpacas.
Dining Table, Pillows, and Library Armchair, Nickey Kehoe; Rug, Lawrence of La Brea; Handwoven Hanging Basket, Alex Rooted.
Left: Tent, Davis Tent. Right: Bedding, Nickey Kehoe.
Aria Chair, Sixpenny; Kids Table and Chairs, Amazon; Vintage Rug; Toys, Acorn Store.
Top: Bedding and Les Indiennes Kristina Pillowcase, Nickey Kehoe; Rug, Lawrence of La Brea. Bottom right: Vintage Bathtub.
Left: Tsukiusagi Enamel Slimpot Kettle, Nickey Kehoe. Right: Japanese Ceramics, New High Mart; Dinnerware, Heath Ceramics.
Vintage Pillow,
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Small Narrow Pleat Porcelain Light, DeVol
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Tsukiusagi Enamel Slimpot Kettle, Nickey Kehoe
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Aria Chair, Sixpenny
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