LOS ANGELES—CA
In her work and home, Birkett’s signature is vibrant shades—and lots of them. The entryway, licked in a beige limewash, eases visitors into what’s to come in the living room, where a wallpaper she designed on Spoonflower bumps up against teal molding, a combo that’s a reflection of the couple’s heritage. (She is Jamaican and Barbadian; Gibbs is Barbadian and Canadian; and as Birkett puts it, “I’m African American, but have also been colonized by the British, so I have some British vibes and Caribbean ones.”) The room leads to a screened indoor porch drenched in a shade not unlike that of a tropical sea.
None of it is meant to be too formal. Like in street style, putting everything together is the fun part. “Wallpaper is very serious, but I like taking it and making it not so serious,” she says. In a powder room, Sheila Bridges’s yellow Harlem Toile de Jouy is a literal modern twist on a traditional pattern: In it, the characters are playing basketball and jumping double Dutch. A cornflower pedestal sink pops against the mellow citrine. Birkett explains: “You can’t be scared to mix it up.”
In the boys’ bathroom, a vintage sink hangs below a Grant mirror from Schoolhouse. Vintage sconces came from Olde Good
Things, and a Crate & Kids art cart is filled with bathing essentials. Everything pops against Off-Black paint by Farrow & Ball. Below, Elite
tile covers the shower. In the main bedroom, right, Portola Paints & Glazes Roman Clay Treatment in Costes sets a moody backdrop for a Floyd bed frame, Coyuchi quilt, and Stripes pillow by Injiri and ikat
vintage cushion by Ixcasala, both from Lost & Found.
Above, a RH table adds a rustic touch to the dining room, where HD Buttercup dining chairs convene around a Lost
& Found wood bowl by Peterman. Below and right,
Birkett chills on the sofa with Gibbs, while their teenage
sons hang out with the family dog.
Sunlight and a coat of St. Giles Blue by Farrow & Ball drench the sunroom, where a fully stocked bar
provides a cool drink anytime. Elit tile lines the floor,
and IKEA dining chairs surround a vintage table topped with a Lawson-Fenning Dune vessel by Ceramicah.
Style
of
House
Photography by JASON FRANK ROTHENBERG
Words by JULIE VADNAL
Styling by KATE BERRY
Under the moniker Bephie,
Beth Birkett designs the streetwear all the cool kids are wearing. At her Los Angeles home, she takes those same stylish principles—comfort first, fashion closely following—and spins them into a look that’s totally her own.
A
s Beth “Bephie” Birkett walks me through her four-bedroom L.A. house over FaceTime, the creative director, video director, and judge on HBO Max’s The Hype gestures toward Portola paint colors and her collection of Black art, all while wearing three
Above, a Lougè Delcy print rests above a mantel painted in Farrow & Ball’s Arsenic. An orange custom coffee table from The Never Ending Balloon clashes, but in a cool way. On the left, the couple’s collection of art books
is always on hand for inspiration. Below
a Jayson Scott Musson work peeks through a houseplant.
—BETH BIRKETT
“Being comfortable, and being authentic, that’s really it.”
In the couple’s room, terracotta-colored walls create a serene space for them to display even more meaningful art: a Banksy print above the fireplace, which Birkett lined in Mexican tiles, and, hovering over the Floyd bed, a collection of grasses, also from Mexico. You wouldn’t think to put them together—a street artist and a soft ponytail of dried greenery—but, of course, in Birkett’s house it works.
Just like her wardrobe, Birkett’s home is an ever-changing experiment that can’t be boxed into one particular era or culture or sentiment. “I might wear bamboo earrings one day, but the next I’m wearing pearls,” she says, similar to the way that her living space is always in rotation. “And that’s okay.”
So instead of filling her living room with new or trending furniture, she chooses pieces that mean something to her and her family. In the corner, a Karon Davis bust titled Jasmine 2, visible through a blue display case, sits opposite a sculpture by the artist’s late husband, Noah Davis, who was a friend of Birkett and Gibbs. Jayson Scott Musson’s cartoon-like drawings hang next to a Keith Haring print she found at a vintage shop. Artifacts from trips to one of her favorite places, Mexico City, appear all over, and a bookshelf under the television is completely devoted to art books.
Just as she does on The Hype, Birkett highlights up-and-comers in her offscreen life. “I work with a lot of young people, and I love to help them in their careers,” she says. “It’s the same with my house. I look for people who are doing really cool, different stuff, because I find the interiors world to be not so open.” Case in point: A portrait of her boys by young artist Delfin Finley leads to the upstairs, where an even younger artist, one of her teenage sons, often works on his paintings in his bedroom. (The boys’ bathroom sink doubles as a place to wash brushes.) Birkett is proof that you don’t need an interior designer—or access to gatekeeping showrooms—to help you showcase your personal style.
It’s an ethos they carry over into their home, which the couple bought in 2019 due to its central location, Lafayette Square, a historically Black neighborhood that felt inclusive for their two sons and had properties that reminded her of her family’s Harlem brownstone. Here, they could put their relaxed aesthetic into action. In the living room, two RH Cloud sofas, which Birkett dyed seafoam green and then covered in quilts (“It’s not me to have a white couch or a white anything,” she says), mingle with an oversize orange coffee table and lead to a marble-drenched open kitchen—a natural gathering space when friends come over.
If comfort is her first tenet, then aesthetics come next. Bephie, a nickname she got as a kid as a form of endearment from her friends and family, has been mixing high and low pieces and clashing patterns since the ’90s, when she lived in New York City and had many jobs, first in music, then in fashion, and eventually at MTV.
“I was a weirdo,” she says. “I definitely stood out for my style. And you know what it is? I’m not afraid to be who I am.” She now uses the name Bephie for her creative studio, which is responsible for partnerships with Jordan and Nike, and for Bephie’s Beauty Supply, a marketplace of Black-owned beauty brands and hair accessories. You’ll often spot a hip, in-the-know woman wearing a BBS tee; a pair of their limited-edition pajamas even appeared in an episode of Insecure.
giant red braids (“My youthful ponytails,” as she calls them) and a sweater-vest over a tee. There’s no other way to say it: She looks cool as hell.
“The bulk of our style is around comfort first,” she says of herself and husband Chris Gibbs, who together own Union, a West Coast streetwear institution they started in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood in 1989, before moving it across the country. “Being comfortable, and being authentic, that's really it.”
Studio Art Cart
Crate & Kids, $299
Nova Coffee Table
Room & Board, $799
Arsenic Paint
Farrow & Ball
The Bed Frame
Floyd, $1,875
Shop the
Story
Sheila Bridges’s Harlem Toile de
Jouy lines the powder room, above, where a vintage sink and mirror make nice with a Trio ceramic coatrack by Virginia Sin and Waffle
towels by Linge Particulier.
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LOS ANGELES—CA