California Dreaming

All she had really been planning to do was go on vacation. Paula Bruss was 14, a high-school student in Hamburg, when her parents took her and her little sister on a trip to California, to L.A. “I immediately fell in love with L.A., thought it was really cool. There were so many perspectives, the people were completely different and the weather was great,” she recalls. “All of us liked it, in fact, so we thought: Let’s move here!” The whim turned into reality and in 2014, the family left Germany for Malibu – first for six months, then longer, and then, it appears, permanently.

Paula Bruss: Young & successful interior designer

If you google Paula Bruss today, you’ll learn two things: that she and Dylan Jagger Lee, model, musician and son of Pamela Anderson and her ex-husband Tommy Lee, have been together for many years. And that Paula is now 24 and a successful interior designer. Both developments came about quite naturally: “Dylan and I were neighbors in Malibu,” she says, “we knew each other from saying ‘hi, how are you,’ as you do when you run into people often, but we didn’t know each other well.” That changed after a party she attended at Dylan’s house, just three doors away. “After that, we saw each other almost every day.” Their relationship even survived Paula’s relocation to New York, when she went there to attend college. “When I returned to L.A., we moved in together.”

Paula Bruss’s style combines European elements with a cheerful American touch.

The first big project after graduation: designing the house of Pamela Anderson's son

Back in L.A., Paula attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising: “My mother was super interested in interior design and architecture, and when we moved to Malibu, she decorated our first house really well, it even featured in Architectural Digest. I thought I’d like to do something like that too, although I wasn’t sure it was really the kind of thing you could make a career out of.”

She soon learned that you could, and exactly how to do so. In school, but also from Vanessa Alexander, an interior decorator for whom she worked part-time. Paula was young and bursting with enthusiasm, but she also evidently had good taste: “Working for Vanessa, I learned how to remodel an entire house.”

When she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in interior design and interior architecture in 2023, she had almost already completed her first big project – the house she shared with Dylan, his brother Brandon and Brandon’s girlfriend Lily, and their dogs, Dinosaur and Zucchini.

British country house meets a cheerful American touch

It was a 1950s farmhouse on Rancho Street in Encino, just half an hour’s drive from downtown L.A. “Dylan and Brandon bought it and asked me to take charge of remodeling and furnishing it. This project was actually a couple of sizes too big for me, so in the beginning, I had to ask for help. Also because I was still finishing up my degree. I’m very happy with the result; all of us are happy living in the house.”

This hardly comes as a surprise: The house is very spacious, it has smooth timber floors and an open kitchen that is painted chocolate brown; natural tones dominate, there are Moroccan carpets, bathrooms with antique-looking mosaic tiles and carefully selected vintage furniture. It feels like a cozy British country house with European elements and a cheerful, American touch. And it even featured on television – this is America, after all – in Pamela Anderson’s home renovation reality show “Pamela’s Garden of Eden,” which first aired on pay TV channel HGTV and later on Hulu.

Renovation of Pamela Anderson's boathouse: romantic French style

The next season is in the works. It will focus on the renovation of Pamela Anderson’s boathouse on Vancouver Island in Canada. This time, Paula Bruss will be taking charge of the project, although the style will cater more to Anderson’s tastes than her own: “Pamela’s style is very romantic, she loves roses, comfy sofas, cushions, flowers and vanity tables for her perfume bottles. At her house, I feel like I’m inside a castle from a French fairy tale.”

This won’t be a problem for Paula at all since she’s very accepting of other people’s tastes and actually likes Anderson’s boudoir style. “It’s easy to work with Pamela because she’s so laid-back. And I know that she trusts me. Not just because I’m going out with her son but because I’m from Europe, am familiar with French style and understand her taste for it.”

Paula Bruss' gallery "Raum" in West Hollywood

By collaborating with Pamela Anderson, Paula Bruss is naturally drawing a lot of attention to herself, but her customers usually find their way to her door in less spectacular fashion. A couple of months ago, she and a friend opened a gallery called Raum (which means room or space) in a top location in West Hollywood (home to Sunset Strip). Paula’s design studio is upstairs, and downstairs there’s a little store specializing in antique and mid-century furniture, home accessories, art and a host of other beautiful things.

Paula is also collaborating with two young entrepreneurs who flip houses – buy them, remodel them and sell them again. The remodeling part is naturally Paula’s job. Last June, she completed her first house in Woodland Hills.

Is it easier to be successful doing this kind of work in the U.S. than in Germany? “Absolutely,” Paula says, and goes on to explain: “Most people in Europe decorate their homes themselves, they don’t need a designer to do it for them. It’s different here in the States, people like to take advice.”

She thinks it helps that she’s originally from Germany because Americans love the old world look that she creates – even though she herself is still so young. “My style is a pleasant style, most people like it and feel comfortable with it.”