Thank Sottsass for the Most Memphis House Imaginable

"We had worked with Ettore and all of the Memphis designers since the conception of our company," says Lesley Bailey, who founded the jewelry and accessories brand ACME Studio with her husband, Adrian Olabuenaga, in 1985. She’s referring, of course, to Ettore Sottsass, the Italian architect and designer who, after more than 30 years of practice, went on to helm the radical but short-lived collective known for its brash, offbeat furnishings steeped in visual irony and colorful, discordant juxtapositions. "At the time, no one else had claim to that but us," she says, of the Memphis keepsakes still produced by ACME today. Life and business have long intertwined for Lesley and Adrian, who first met at a trade show in Los Angeles and now work and live in Hawaii, where their home—Casa Olabuenaga—is itself an original Sottsass design.