DeWayne Porter, an interior designer and set designer with a celebrity client list, has died. The exact cause was not known, but Porter, 43, had a chronic liver disease, said his father, Clifford Porter.
Mr. Porter, who died May 26, was one of the first black interior designers to be included in such celebrity fundraiser events as Divine Design in Los Angeles and the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts.
He was known for classically based, elegant designs with a vintage flavor. He sometimes decorated rooms with damask wallpaper, heavy drapes and neoclassic sculpture. Other times he used modern materials and abstract art. He aimed to create an African-American style, he said, but not with kente cloth and ethnic furnishings.
“We are a rich people, but it’s not often reflected in our homes,” Mr. Porter said in a 2000 interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel. “We are warm, colorful people, but our houses have drab white walls and fluorescent lights. Our homes should be our sanctuary.”
He made inroads into the predominantly white design profession throughout his career and was featured in several prominent home decor magazines.
Mr. Porter’s first clients included members of the Little Rock Baptist Church he attended in his native Detroit. One church member introduced him to singer Aretha Franklin, who hired him to decorate her waterfront apartment in the city.
As part of a 1996 fundraising event in Detroit, he was asked to decorate a room in a local mansion where he created a “fantasy bedroom” that mixed classical and “cyberspace” themes. He dedicated it to another singer, Nancy Wilson.
“He used beautiful fabrics, warm colors. It was very elegant,” Wilson said. “DeWayne had great taste.”
Wilson said she later hired Porter to decorate her condominium in Las Vegas.
He refurbished the office of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer in the mid-1990s, giving the room a modern look to replace what he considered a hodgepodge of styles.
Born Sept. 4, 1962, Mr. Porter attended Lawrence Institute of Technology in Detroit, where he studied architecture for two years. He studied design at the Harrington Institute of Interior Design in Chicago and the Pratt Institute in New York.
Mr. Porter moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s and added theater set design to his range of projects. He earned an NAACP Image Award for best set decoration in 2003 for the touring show “Love Makes Things Happen.” He said that his proudest achievement came in 2005 when he was chosen to contribute to the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts, where 40,000 visitors saw his work. He was chosen to decorate a back hallway and rear staircase in the featured house, an Italianate estate built by Wallace Neff in 1929.
“He was disappointed about getting a hallway,” Mr. Porter’s longtime friend Clarence Brown said. “He wanted a more prominent space. But DeWayne said, `I’ll take it and make something of it.’ And that’s what he did.”
