How The Shards Created the Early-’80s Bedrooms of Our Teenage Dreams

If you don’t have some kind of chevron accent wall behind your bed right now, you may want one after watching The Shards. The new FX series from executive producer Ryan Murphy, based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis, takes viewers inside the homes and hangouts of the prep-school elite in 1981 Los Angeles. What the characters lack in empathy—the party must go on even if there’s a serial killer targeting the city’s teens and classmates go missing—they make up for with their parents’ decorating budget.  

That presented a fun assignment for production designer Cat Smith and set decorator Lori Mazuer, who quickly learned 1980’s American Gigolo was Murphy’s visual inspiration. “He just loved the minimalist look of it, the clean design, Armani, very big but also sophisticated,” says Smith. Her team stalked Chairish and 1^st Dibs for Steve Chase furniture and challenged themselves to give the family of main character Bret (played by Igby Rigney), an aspiring writer, a complete Lou Hodges collection for their dining and sitting rooms. “Each piece was found separately and from all over the country,” Mazuer says, noting they ultimately had L.A. dealer Vintage On Point make the couch. (Other local vintage favorites included Divine’s in Monterey Park and Sunbeam Vintage in Highland Park.) 

Here, Smith and Mazuer take us inside a few of our favorite rooms and tease what’s to come.

Debbie’s bedroom

As the daughter of a film producer and model, Debbie (Hayes Warner) was born to love drama, and her pink bedroom delivers. The glamorous molded-plastic vanity—“a non-negotiable” for Murphy, Smith says—was found on Facebook Marketplace, as was Debbie’s Hollywood Regency-style headboard. “It wasn’t in the best condition but our amazing construction team was able to repair it and bring it back to life,” Mazuer says of the latter. “The arched-styled passthrough was from a completely different piece of furniture. Cat and I agreed immediately that it would be perfect to incorporate it into the design.”

The fabulous Karl Springer bullnose dresser, finished with a high-gloss lacquer Formica, was nabbed via Pickin’ Through Time, a vintage seller on Instagram. The bed was bookended with acrylic wing lamps rented from Universal Prop House and backed by an Art Deco-inspired accent wall for which Smith got the idea when doing photo research of late-’70s bedrooms. “When you’re designing period, you’re thinking about the characters and when they actually did the design of their house. When did they get that renovation?” she says. “That is actually what Debbie would have been influenced by.”

Liz’s bedroom 

Debbie’s parents, Terry (Wes Bentley) and Liz (Evan Rachel Wood), sleep in separate bedroom suites. His has a sunken living room and blue-suede walls. Hers has a Vladimir Kagan-style chair where she can sit to make calls, a custom-built 15-foot vanity (“It was written as ‘the largest vanity you’ve ever seen,’” Smith says); and a custom round bed with a curved brass headboard that they upholstered.

Again, Smith was inspired by photo research. “I’m an insane Pinterest fan, so I probably have 20,000 photos tagged. I have every time period. I have all the time periods as related to Los Angeles,” the born local explains, “and then I have show categories. I never stop, so I am literally still tagging photos for this show hoping to God that it gets picked up for a second season. And I have like 100 new bed ideas.”

Bret’s bedroom 

The three-dimensional navy-blue chevron wall is the hero of Bret’s more modest midcentury room, which features a vintage desk chair by Dick Spierenburg for Castelijn from LA’s Amsterdam Modern and wall storage for his cassettes. They made sure he owns albums mentioned in the book and that his bathroom sink is surrounded by period-appropriate product.

That kind of attention to detail, Smith adds, leads to going down rabbit holes when choosing telephones for characters; tasking someone with scouring eBay for authentic intercom systems and heating panels to cover up the modern ones on location shoots; and “a whole argument about pool inflatables.” 

“The greatest thing about my job is that all of the sudden, I’m looking at what size pool inflatables existed versus today, or because we did a concession stand at a movie theater, I’m like, ‘I know for sure we didn’t have that candy, and that brand of root beer was not around in Los Angeles in the ’80s,’” she says. “The funniest thing was that everybody kept saying, ‘What about the ATM?’ And I’m like, ‘We had ATMs!’ People think that we were in the Dark Ages.”

Hamburger Hamlet 

The series’ central gang—Bret, Debbie, Susan (Kaia Gerber), Thom (Graham Campbell), and mysterious new kid Robert (Home Gere)—are regulars at Hamburger Hamlet, the upscale restaurant that made burgers chic. Smith, who was a patron in her youth, embraced the show’s tribute with custom-made booths, tables, and chairs modeled after the chain’s Sunset location, multiple bars for visual interest, and a “really, really cool” indoor fireplace that she’d seen in old photos. They even tracked down artist Michael Bryan, who’d painted most of the large LA street scenes for the chain. “We purchased a file of the original piece that hung in the Sherman Oaks Galleria and had a giclée made of it,” Mazuer says. 

Elsewhere on the town…

We’ve already been to a mall and record store in the series premiere. More favorite ‘80s-teen haunts get their due in future episodes. In the third hour, there’s a skating rink sequence. “I got my inspiration from Xanadu and also Skatetown U.S.A,” Smith says. “I saw a skating rink that had a bouquet of disco balls in the center, and I was like, ‘I definitely have to do that.’” 

Episode five is a showstopper revolving around a televised teen dance show. “The Soul Train look was so in the browns and the colors of the ’70s, and that really appealed to Ryan,” Smith hints.

Then comes the two-part Homecoming, which the production designer says includes a parade float heavily based on the brightly colored Memphis design style that came out of Milan in the early ‘80s. “I only knew it by look, I didn’t know what it was called,” she admits with a laugh. “I have to tell you, being around Ryan Murphy is like being at a school of architecture and interior design. He’ll say something and I’ll be, ‘Oh yeah, yeah,’ and then I’ll have to go and research it.”