Rochelle Gores Fredston J. Mendel

Media Platforms Design Team

She was trying to make pancakes, but they didn't turn out quite right," says Rochelle Gores Fredston of her two-year-old daughter, Colette, who gleefully scooped flour onto the family's white oak kitchen floor during the Bazaar photo shoot. Needless to say, Fredston, a board member of the fashion label J. Mendel, and her financier husband, David, are not fussy people. Last December, they completed a gut renovation of their Beverly Hills house, which they redesigned to accommodate their growing family (a second daughter, Claire, was born in November) as well as a constant stream of visitors. "We love to do big dinners with good wine," says Fredston. "My dad and siblings just pop in as they please."

Her decorator, Joan Behnke, is also close with the family, having done several houses for Fredston's father, Alec Gores, who owns a Los Angeles–based private equity firm. Behnke custom-designed nearly everything in the Fredston home, right down to the delicate bronze chains that suspend the living room curtains from the ceiling. She also created alcoves for the couple's burgeoning art collection, which includes paintings by Larry Poons and David Wightman. Fredston's decor, like her personal style, is breezy and elegant. "I never want to be overdone," she says. "It's nerve-racking when a room is filled with a lot of things, and the same goes for an outfit. If you have earrings and a necklace and a belt and big high heels—it's stressful!"

Besides her work with J. Mendel, Fredston devotes herself to the Philanthropic Society Los Angeles, a group she founded to help victims of domestic abuse. She often hosts impromptu board meetings at her dining room table (another Behnke design), with her daughters playing nearby. "I like having the kids interact with our work," she says. "It's how they learn good patterns of behavior, like looking people in the eye." Of course, Colette has started to focus on other patterns too—the ones on her bathing suits. "She'll take a polka-dot top and pair it with a striped bottom. I have to laugh, because how can she possibly know that mixing prints is so stylish and cool?"

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