Carlos Alberto

Designer Profile

Carlos Alberto Gutierrez Yanome's interiors and furniture pair world-class modern styling with indigenous building materials and natural surfaces. That combination was set early. He spent his formative years in Guadalajara, Mexico, traveled widely with his Spanish father and Japanese mother, was educated at The American School, and lived in an award-winning modernist home that was featured frequently in society publications – a beginning that turned into a lifelong interest in how honest materials and clean modern lines work together in a room.

His formal training completed the picture. He left Mexico for architectural studies and a degree in Interior Design at Santa Monica College, and in 1994 he joined the famed Cuban-born decorator Waldo Fernandez as Creative Director of antique reproductions. Antique reproductions are a demanding school: every piece has to respect a historical model while surviving modern manufacture and daily use, and the role put him in charge of that balance for a Hollywood clientele. The full account of those years, with the client names attached to them, is kept on the history page linked below.

Furniture and Retail Work

At The Skyline Studios in Los Angeles, Carlos co-managed the studio while producing his own collection of fine modern furniture. Studio coverage from the same period describes the Carlos Alberto Collection, the studio’s furnishings brand, in exotic macassar and zebrawood with off-white linen slipcovers and a calm, zen-infused silhouette – low, sophisticated seating designed to sit quietly in a dramatic room rather than compete with it. The same lounge furniture was used for the studio’s VIP lounge at MOCA The Geffen Contemporary during Fashion Week Los Angeles in March 2005.

Alongside the fine furniture, he produced a modular collection for retail stores. Modular retail furniture has a different discipline from residential work: units must reconfigure as seasons and floor plans change, survive constant handling, and still read as one designed environment. That retail side of the practice connects directly to the studio’s store design work, covered on the Retail Store Design page, where fixturing and floor planning for fashion retail are set out in detail.

Residential Work

The third strand of the documented practice is residential work for his own clientele. The record describes a designer serving private clients personally rather than through a large project office, with a modern sensibility carried from the furniture into whole rooms: natural surfaces, indigenous materials and restrained modern forms, adapted to how each household actually lives. Named residential clients and the television appearances that showcased the work – a feature with Lynette Jennings on the Discovery Network and a special design project for E! Style network’s AREA show – are part of the historical record and are listed in full on the history page.

Readers should treat the client names, project descriptions and contact details here as the documented record of the studio’s work as it was presented at the time. No current source confirms present-day activity, so the record is given in the past tense. Anyone planning to commission work should confirm current availability, services and contact details before relying on them.

Inquiries and Press Contact

The contact the record provides for inquiries and press is Debra Stevenson, Director of Development, at debra@theskylinestudios.com. Debra Stevenson’s own page in this section, linked in the More to Explore list below, covers her role in the studio. Because contact details change, please treat the address as the channel of record from the documented biography and check the Apparel Search Design Studio hub for the studio’s current pages.

Carlos Alberto History & Historical Profile →

The full documented biography – the Guadalajara upbringing, the Santa Monica College training, the 1994 Waldo Fernandez years, the Hollywood and residential client lists and the television work – is kept complete on the history page.