Carlos Alberto History

Early Life in Guadalajara

Interior Designer Carlos Alberto Gutierrez Yanome spent his formative years in Guadalajara, Mexico, with art and design in his bones. He traveled widely with his Spanish father and Japanese mother, was educated at The American School and lived in an award-winning modernist home featured frequently in society publications. This inspired beginning set the tone for a lifelong love affair with indigenous building materials, natural surfaces and world-class modern styling.

From his surf-loving circle of school chums has emerged a formidable group of design talent like painter Brewster Brockman, architects Alvaro Gomez, Manuel Morales, Jorge Chavez and Jose Luis Nino. Together they influence the shape of contemporary Mexican design today. That schoolboy circle matters to the biography because it places Carlos inside a generation of Mexican artists and architects who were redefining the country’s modern design at the same time he was forming his own eye for materials, proportion and the meeting of local building traditions with international modernism.

Training and the Waldo Fernandez Years

Carlos left Mexico to complete architectural studies and a degree in Interior Design at Santa Monica College, then joined famed Cuban-born decorator Waldo Fernandez in 1994 as Creative Director of antique reproductions. He oversaw projects for a discerning Hollywood clientele including Peter Guber, Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson, Russell Simmons and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett.

The 1994 appointment is the hinge of the early career. Creative Director of antique reproductions meant directing furniture that had to be faithful to historical pieces and practical as new work at the same time, for clients whose homes were photographed and published. It is also where the biography’s two threads – furniture and interiors – join: the designer who later produced his own fine modern furniture collection first learned the trade reproducing antiques at the highest level of the Los Angeles decorating world.

The Skyline Studios in Los Angeles

Today, in the timeframe the biography describes, Carlos co-manages The Skyline Studios – Apparel Search Design Studio in Los Angeles, producing his own collection of fine modern furniture, a modular collection for retail stores and passionately serves the needs of his own residential clientele including famed volleyball player Gabriel Reece, Holly McPeak, Denzel Washington, executives from Microsoft, Superb Records and Disney.

Studio coverage from March 2005 adds dated detail to that picture. The Skyline Studios was founded by principals Carlos Alberto Gutierrez and Debra Stevenson, described as an interdisciplinary style lab for interiors and fashion serving as the West Coast office for Apparel Search. Its projects at the time included furniture for the Bellagio Spa Tower in Las Vegas, newly designed penthouse suites at Casa Cupula in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and a turnkey program for Terrazas del Sol at The Four Seasons Hotel, Punta Mita, and its Carlos Alberto Collection furniture furnished the studio’s VIP lounge at MOCA The Geffen Contemporary during Fashion Week Los Angeles.

Television and Public Work

Appearances on various television programs, including a feature with Lynette Jennings on Discovery Network and a special design project for E! Style network’s AREA show, give Carlos the opportunity to showcase his modern design sensibility in new ways. Television work of that kind asked a designer to explain material and layout choices to a general audience, in finished rooms, on camera – a public extension of the same residential practice described above.

For inquiries and press contact, the biography names Debra Stevenson, Director of Development, at debra@theskylinestudios.com. That contact belongs to the period the biography describes; it is carried here because it is part of the record, and the disclaimer below explains why current details should be confirmed before use.

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