I realize I might be picking a bone with this....but, have you ever thought that some designers go a little over the top when it comes to their "signature" style?

I had a bit of a brainstorm after a little convo with Jenny from MFAMB, after she posted a pic of this bedroom done by Kelly Wearstler, and commented how she neither delighted in nor hated the room.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and saying "blech!" I feel that, rather than truly being unique, Wearstler worked very deliberately to give this room the "I'm-so-over-Imperial-Trellis-and-now-do-strange-stuff" Kelly Wearstler treatment.

I feel like the glamazon who designed this room...

...Was replaced by the design duo of Abby Cadaby/Olivia-Newton-John.

I feel Wearstler must have been so weary of being typecast as the Queen of Hollywood Regency, that she drifted into this realm of renewed 70s with the sort of flagrant devil-may-care attitude that only someone supremely confident in their marketability has (not that that's a bad thing.)
A year ago, Apartment Therapy stated that Wearstler's "new" design aesthetic had yet to take off....

Hmmm...can't imagine why it hadn't???

The latest issue of Metropolitan Home featured her Malibu beach house, and it appears she's still pushing this 70's redux "moment."

With all due respect to the design chops she's earned...I'll take a pass.

But Wearstler's attempt to "move on" from the peak of 30's glamour leads me to a larger issue: That some designers, who have become well-known for a particular "look" chose one of two paths.
They may, in an effort to stay fresh (among the design glitterati), resort to bizarre aberrations of their seminal style. Alternately, they chose to look to that huge goddess in the sky known as "branding," and become parodies of their own work.

I feel Jonathan Adler is a prime example of the latter choice. I really like his work, so this is not coming from a crabby place, but must we be inundated by "Adler-isms" in all his designs? Chinoiserie - check. His own pottery - check. Graphic patterns - check. It all seems rather predictable.

I suspect there is method (and money) in the madness. Clients don't hire Jonathan Adler to not have a "signature" Adler space, and those who hire Wearstler likely deem themselves on the cutting edge of the next-best-thing in design, and want their spaces to reflect that.

So I ask, if we were to hire a famous designer, would we want everyone (or, at least our design-junkie friends) to be able to walk into a room and declare, "Oh, so-and-so did this room?"
Is a designer in fact chosen on the basis of his or her tried-and-true aesthetic, and expected to carry it out without straying from his particular formula - even if it turns out being the interior design equivalent of an overused logo?