SPEED DIAL BRAD DUNNING

Like a shrink, West Coast interior designer Brad Dunning is always on call. With projects such as redoing the conference rooms of CAA (and the home of CAA superagent Bryan Lourd), NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer’s desert retreat in Palm Springs, and Tom Ford’s houses in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, and helping Gina Gershon revamp her New York loft, Dunning claims he’s rarely not on his Motorola StarTAC flip phone. When not conferring with clients, he is dialing up one of his “trades,” such as the cabinetmaker or the upholsterer. “I’m in the car constantly,” the 42-year-old Memphis-bred designer explains. “If Tom [Ford] is in Europe, the numbers are so long that it’s great to have them on speed dial. It’s pretty handy for not getting into a wreck.”

Famed for helping to jump-start the frenzy for mid-century modernism, Dunning was also a pioneer in moving to Palm Springs before it became red-hot. “Part of the appeal was there was this modem ghost town where houses were practically being given away,” he says. “Tumbleweeds rolling past a Miesian pavilion type of thing, but it’s not like that anymore.” Dunning is integral in the Palm Springs Modem Committee, which protects the desert resort’s modernist buildings from demolition. Also involved in preservation issues is Palm Springs filmmaker Douglas Keeve, who is entry

No. 8 on Dunning’s speed dial. Numero uno is “best friend,” book publisher, and client Lisa Eisner. “Lisa is one of my muses,” he gushes. “I get a lot of inspiration from her, so she’s probably called more than anyone else. I’ve got her car phone, her office, her house, her private line. Like everyone in L.A., she’s got several lines. I have 10 listings for Tom, including Paris, London, Los Angeles, Santa Fe.” (Nos. 2 through 7 are all lines to the globe-trotting Gucci designer.) Though most of Dunning’s clients are close friends and speed-dialees, 90 percent of his calls are business-related.

“Unfortunately, I’m constantly on the phone,” he says. “I feel more like a crisis-intervention counselor than a designer most of the time.”

PETER DAVIS

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