I lived in New York for eight years, back in the day, and I’m always glad for any excuse to return to the city. ICFF (the International Contemporary Furniture Fair) is as good an excuse as any. During the fair, New York is alive with design energy, innovative new products, great parties and interesting people to meet. (Actually, New York is always like that, just a bit more so during ICFF.) We were also hosting another Fifth Anniversary party at the penthouse of the Hudson Hotel on Wednesday evening. My wife, Margo, and I arrived Tuesday evening (JetBlue, Burbank to JFK, easy) and checked into the Empire Hotel, just across from Lincoln Center. The Empire, an old New York hotel, has been completely redone, with snappy design, a hip lobby-lounge and a LA-style pool deck on the rooftop. (Our publisher, Jennifer Matthews, discovered the Empire, as it’s just around the corner from our New York office.) After settling into our room, Margo and I strolled out in search of dinner. I’d always liked Café Luxembourg, and I was happy to find that it’s still there and still thriving, the kind of timeless New York bistro that makes me feel reconnected to the city when I’ve been away for awhile.

On Wednesday morning I dropped by the Western Interiors & Design office to catch up with our team there, Donnalynn Civello, Craig Abrams, Dina Duncan, Vic Sauerhoff, Rachel Zucker, Bruce Leong and Jennifer. We also met with our new production team, Publishing Professionals, headed up by the talented Janet Mannheimer and her associates Elaine Callender and Kady Francesconi. Jennifer, Dina and I then headed out to meet Jolie Cross of Robert Allen at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House (stopping for a glamorous stand-up lunch at a nearby Starbucks). Jolie met us at the penthouse designed by Larry Laszlo, who has done such remarkable fabric collections for Robert Allen. The rooms had a fresh, bright, sophisticated feel to them that reminded me of California (say, a modern San Francisco apartment from 1940s?) And his Walker Zanger bath design was a star of the show. We then went through the various rooms to see what was what. It’s always great to see Charlotte Moss’s beautiful work in person, and Geoffrey Bradfield’s room was spiffy, too. On the whole, though, it seemed to me that Kips Bay could use a fresh jolt of western talent.

From Kips Bay we walked over to the B&B Italia showroom, where we had a quick tour of the Maxalto Collection by architect Antonio Citterio, which is remarkably sleek and chic. Before I knew it, though, it was time to prepare for our party at the Hudson. After a pit stop at the Empire, I walked a few blocks down to the Hudson, whose lobby is still one of the liveliest scenes in Manhattan. I took the elevator to the Penthouse suite, which I hadn’t seen in person, and I was impressed. The large living room is bordered with wide expanses of glass and opens onto a terrace overlooking the Hudson River and sweeping views to the west (appropriately). It had been a warm spring day, and as the sun set, the lights of the city came on and a cool breeze stirred the ornamental trees that were placed around the terrace. It was the perfect setting for a party, and I took a moment to enjoy it before our guests arrived. (See my separate blog post about our Hudson Penthouse party.)

On Thursday morning, Jennifer and I had a meeting with business associates near Madison Avenue and 54th Street, and I miscalculated the time it would take me to walk there from the Empire (you know, we don’t walk that much in Los Angeles). Realizing that I was going to be late, I walked faster and faster until I was out of breath and felt completely disheveled as I stumbled into the lobby. I managed to compose myself somewhat in the elevator, and the meeting was quite productive, but the experience reminded me that I’m officially an out-of-towner now by New York standards.

Our next stop was downtown, with Beth Greene and Ann Feldstein of Kravet and Lee Jofa. (On the way, Jennifer and I stopped for lunch at Aspen on 22nd Street, a tongue-in-cheek hip-rustic restaurant and bar that we loved.) They showed us some amazing new lines, including the new fabrics from Los Angeles designer Windsor Smith, which looked right on the money. It will be a big hit: casual, fun, sophisticated, very California.

Margo and I met a good friend that night at Commerce, which is tucked away in one of those magical corners in the West Village, near the Cherry Lane Theater. Commerce is in the charmingly irregular space that once housed the Blue Mill Tavern, and it’s now a first-rate bistro with an excellent (and reasonable) wine list. After a leisurely dinner, Margo and I wandered around the Village for a while before cabbing it back uptown.

Jennifer and I had a breakfast meeting on Friday with David Schaffer and Nancy Green of Waterworks at Brasserie 44 in the Royalton Hotel. Waterworks is one of the most innovative design companies around, and we were excited to hear about their new flagship store opening in Los Angeles. It’s an ambitious project and could serve as a prototype that helps position Waterworks as a premier global brand.

From there, we walked across town to meet with Richard Schultz, the renowned furniture designer who was holding forth at the DelGreco & Company showroom at the D&D Building. As the rain came down outside, I relished the opportunity to sit and talk with Richard about his long career. Richard is a living American treasure, who worked with all of the midcentury greats at Knoll before starting his own company. His designs from the 1950s and 1960s look utterly contemporary today, which I guess is the definition of “classic.” I really could have spent the whole day there enjoying his company (along with his fabulous pr person Nancy Joseph, of course), but we had to move along.

We wanted to see Ralph Pucci before his big party on Monday, so we grabbed a cab and headed downtown to his showroom. If you haven’t been to the Pucci showroom, do yourself a favor and go. The vast floor-through loft spaces are exhilarating, and the views across the roofscape of lower Manhattan are breathtaking. Aside from that, of course, there is some of the most interesting new furniture design on the planet. We said hello to Ralph and Maria Pucci, and met India Mahdavi, whose new collection is fresh from London. Resin, wood, metal, with a dash of Mod styling, her pieces are unique. We also met Kevin Walz, whose new pieces include superb lighting forms and epoxied ash and walnut tables and chairs. I looked forward to returning on Monday evening.

Jennifer had arranged a visit with Christopher Peacock up in Greenwich, Connecticut, so we headed out into the rain and treacherous field of umbrellas to Grand Central. We had just enough time to have lunch there, looking out over the broad main hall of Grand Central, before hopping the train. The Christopher Peacock showroom in Greenwich is an oasis of ideal kitchen scenarios that immediately made me want to redo our Los Angeles kitchen entirely. Unfortunately, due to rain and customers, Christopher couldn’t meet us at the showroom, but we had a detailed tour and it was good to see the flagship for such a trend-setting company.

I returned to the city, caught my breath at the hotel, and then Margo and I headed downtown to meet my sister, Karen, and her husband, Don, at the Blue Note to see the great South American tenor saxophone player Gato Barbieri (you may remember his evocative theme for the film Last Tango in Paris). After the show, we had coffee at Caffe Reggio, a Village landmark. Karen and Don were early pioneers in SoHo in the 1970s and now live in Upper Grandview, New York, so it was great to be back in the old haunts with them for a night. But I had to go to bed, as we had morning meetings at ICFF on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, Jennifer, Dina and I met our European Director, Paolo Capitini, at the Javits Center and embarked on a series of meetings, among them La Murrina, Natuzzi, Molteni & C, Hansgrohe, Boffi, Merdiani, Poltrona Frau, Rosemary Hallgarten (beautiful rugs!) Yves Behar’s collection for HBF (smart, plugged-in furniture), Sicis Tile, Flexform, Amy Helfand (more beautiful rugs!), dform (cool laser-cut wood-veneer lighting), and many more. It was great to be with Paolo when we met with the Italian companies, as any language barriers melt away in a mellifluous stream of Italian. There is such a strong line of contemporary taste running throughout the American West, and it was exciting to see the range of modern furniture available for many of the contemporary architectural spaces I’m seeing in Texas, Arizona, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc. (Having Paolo there to articulate this in Italian was a great benefit, as I’m more or less limited to Ciao…)

One of the great things about ICFF is that you run into so many people in the design community, strolling the aisles. It’s a stimulating reminder of the interconnected nature of this business, and its international reach. But as exciting as it is, one needs a break after eight hours, so we took our leave. That night, Margo and I had dinner with friends at Smoke, on the Upper West Side, a great hole-in-the-wall jazz club with great music. That night there was a tribute to the great alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, a quintet that was as good as any I’d heard in a long time. (I regret that I didn’t get their names, as each was a master.) By that point I was blissfully tired out, and as we slumped in a cab back to the Empire, we were looking forward to Sunday in New York with nothing to do and no particular place to go.

On Sunday Margo and I wandered through Chelsea, then down to the Meat Packing District for brunch (we ran into Paolo, who was on his way to Pastis between ICFF meetings). Then we walked through Tribeca, and over to Chinatown and Little Italy, through a sprinkling of rain. Happy tourists. By the time we hit the boutiques on Elizabeth Street, where Margo bought me a new tie, I was beginning to fade, so we hopped into a cab back to the hotel. We had a quiet dinner that evening, content to relax into a low-profile enjoyment of the city’s ebb and flow.

Margo headed for the airport to return to Los Angeles for work on Monday morning, and I met Jennifer for more meetings. First up was a stop at Polo/Ralph Lauren, where we met with Virginie Farre, Sophie Thomas and Jamie Gershenbaum. Excellent to catch up with such a first-rate organization, and to brief them about the magazine’s news. Then we stopped to visit with Michael Mandapati and David Rubin at Warp & Weft, the innovative rug company that keeps bringing fresh design options to market. From there we hit the ad agency Cramer-Krasselt and saw Jodi Monroe, who handles the Benjamin Moore paint business, and after that, we went to SoHo to see our friend Janet Provisor, who with her husband, Brad Davis, owns Fort Street Studio. Fort Street Studio continues to create some of the most beautiful rugs on the market, and they recently opened a Los Angeles showroom in the PDC that’s also taking off for them.

After meeting with Nigel Walker and Wei Gao at the That’s Nice agency, who handle great companies like P.E. Guerin and Thibaut, it was time to catch our breath for the evening’s events, which included parties at Minotti, B&B Italia (downtown this time), The Rug Company and Ralph Pucci, among many others. I had been looking forward to the Pucci event, as we’ve partnered with the showroom for great parties in Los Angeles, and I knew they would draw an interesting crowd. I wasn’t disappointed, and spent some time with David Weeks, India Mahdavi, Pilar Viladas of the New York Times, actress Dana Delaney (who admired my new tie), designer Mark Zeff (who showed me some of his spectacular new pieces for Pucci), Kevin Walz, and of course Ralph and Maria Pucci themselves. The party was a fitting end to ICFF, in my view, and I was feeling dazzled by the concentrated energy of New York. Fortunately, I’d arranged to meet friends for dinner at Raoul’s in SoHo, another spot I’ve been going to for more years than I’d like to admit. Raoul’s is utterly unchanged, which is a very good thing: crowded, friendly, noisy, relaxed. Just where I wanted to be at the end of a week in New York.