Inside the Big Business That is Palm Springs Modernism Week

It’s Modernism Week in Palm Springs, and in the city’s Uptown Design District, the Shag Store is bumping. Crowds of people are lined up to meet artist Josh Agle, better known as Shag, whose hyper-colorful and cartoonishly retro serigraph prints are a favorite of the midcentury modern-loving crowd. Agle’s own swinging pad is being featured as part of the week’s tour roster; he’s launching a new line of retro tiles at the fest in partnership with Tesselle and is the big attraction at a pop-up hosted by Dunn-Edwards. (A party at a house he designed was also meant to be one the festival’s marquee events before construction delays waylaid the opening.) In short: If there’s a face of this year’s Palm Springs Modernism Week, it’s Shag.

A participant in the annual event since its official launch in 2006 and in the shopping-centric Palm Springs Modernism Show before that, Shag has become emblematic of the midcentury movement’s rise in the global marketplace over the past decade or so. In that time, Modernism Week itself has changed quite a bit, too, morphing from a small collection of open houses and panels aimed at architecture enthusiasts into a full-on festival celebrating all things mod. This year, from February 16 through 26, there were more than 350 events on the docket, including a robust roster of sold-out three-hour double-decker architectural bus tours and a runway show highlighting vintage fashions from the 1969 Academy Awards. The 11-day event drew more than 100,000 people.

"We have people who come to the festival from Australia and Europe," says Ron Marshall, secretary of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, a Modernism Week partner organization. "There are people who have never dipped their toe into the modernism swimming pool at all, so they’re curious to know what all the buzz is about. You’ve also got old hands that have been here from the beginning. These two weeks are enough to keep our group afloat for the rest of the year, and they help us fund our grants, which we give directly back to the community for architecturally worthy programs."

Local retailers say the wealth of Modernism Week visitors are a boon to their businesses, as well. Agle claims it’s the busiest time of the year in his store. Mike Rivkin, owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs, echoes that sentiment: "February is our biggest month of the year, and Modernism Week is our biggest week of the month. The festival brings a high-end audience to Palm Springs that might otherwise not be here, and they come from all over."

While part of what brings visitors—and what brought me—to Modernism Week is the chance to glimpse favorite properties from afar, the fest also gives attendees the opportunity to get up close and personal with recently renovated spaces. This year, for instance, visitors could tour architect William Krisel’s newly renovated House of Tomorrow (also known as the Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway, where Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned in 1967) or have a poolside drink at the streamlined moderne Ship of the Desert owned by fashion designer Trina Turk. There’s also a bit of real estate voyeurism at play, with many attendees more interested in evaluating fixture choices and paint colors in recent remodels than appreciating the beauty of a clean steel line. On the self-driven Signature Home Tour, I watched numerous people ooh and ahh over homeowners’ Toto fixtures, with one woman remarking, "People have such nice toilets."

Everyone on my Sunday morning tour loved designer Brian Wolbaum’s townhome in the new Cody Place development: It was colorful and campy—especially given the sparse, modern nature of the development—filled with furniture and art that plays into what he calls his "Seventies futuristic" aesthetic. Later, our group donned disposable shoe booties for a glimpse inside Steve McQueen’s first Palm Springs hideaway (now on Airbnb), as we tried to suss out the angles and spots where famed photographer John Dominis captured his iconic Look Magazine snaps of the actor.