The legendary bon vivant and creator of landmark clubs including Boy & Girls and B.C. was 62

I met Bret Witke—who died June 6 at Cedars Sinai hospital just before 11 p.m., around the time things might start bubbling at one of his old haunts—a decade ago at a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills.

Bret didn't much care for the party or the people, and we bonded over his observation, as everyone was taking selfies and Instagramming them, that "People don't really have real conversations anymore."

"You wanna go to the disco with me?" he said towards the end of the dinner. Though I didn't know what he was talking about at the time, I said sure, and we drove down the hill to the Standard hotel where we were ushered past a velvet rope in the lobby, through the bowels of a kitchen, and into the mirrored boîte that was Bryan Rabin's Giorgio's.

Inside, Bret proceeded to introduce me to a who's who of the L.A. nightlife scene, which he’d presided over for years in the Eighties and Nineties as the owner, designer and/or proprietor of Boys & Girls, Your Needs Met, Steeds, The T Room (named after Tania Coleridge, his girlfriend at the time), Club Louie, Union and B.C. The latter occupied the Sunset Boulevard space of what is now Bonhams auction house and was filled with Allen Jones tables, a retractable wall that revealed the dance floor (and a Sea World-curated shark tank) and a condom machine in the bathroom that dispensed prophylactics emblazoned with the Mack truck bulldog on one side and "What was in that drink and where am I?" on the other.

The roving group of scenesters who followed Wilke around was cheekily referred to as the "Bret Pack" and on any given night you might find Thierry Mugler, Herb Ritts, Anne Crawford, Matthew Modine, Tina Chow, Matthew Rolston, Richard Gere, David Lee Roth, Bret Easton Ellis, Warren Beatty, Sandra Bernhard and Madonna unwinding without the threat of paparazzi (though Polaroid sponsored his clubs and his late boyfriend, Chris Daggett, took many indelible candids) in one of Witke's perches.

Born in Newport Beach, Witke studied architecture in Zurich, Milan, and Paris before moving to New York where he worked as a designer at the nightclub Area—he later partnered with the club's founder Eric Goode (B.C. was the west coast facsimile of Goode's M.K. in New York)—then moved back to L.A. working at Versace on Rodeo Drive before making his foray into nightlife with Boys & Girls in the old space of Au Petit Cafe.

As Witke related the story to me in a 2017 interview: "I knew the owner of the Versace store because I shopped there so much and he was like, ‘Why don't you work here?’ I said, ‘Can I have a two-hour lunch?’ He said, ‘Do whatever the fuck you want.’ ‘So I said okay and I sold more clothes than anyone."

After conquering the club scene, Witke went on to become an accomplished interior designer whose portfolio with his Witke Design Group, as noted in a 2015 Architectural Digest article, included nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and "private residences for some of Tinseltown's most elite (and discreet) bons vivants."

Making the transition from a nightlife maven who slept at his clubs to an interior designer known for his sense of calm elan was not an easy, or expected, route and Witke succeeded by all accounts through his ability to transform every environment—be it a West Hollywood restaurant or a Beverly Hills boudoir—into a place his (mostly famous, always fabulous) clients felt they could disarm themselves.

The longtime Vogue editor Lisa Love was a regular at Boys & Girls—"It felt like Les Bain Douches, it felt like home"—who eventually became a client of Witke's. "Bret wanted to impose ‘calm’ in my house. He would have gotten rid of the dog if he could have. White hair on black clothes….not his thing. But he made everything he set his mind to more elegant, including my house."

Witke loved to have dinners at Jar, the iconic West Hollywood chophouse he designed, which the Vegas cultural critic Michael Shulman once described as having "the feeling of substantial luxury that's comfortable with itself…the luxe walnut of the walls; the rolling club chairs that enveloped each guest; the diffuse lighting; and that sense of flow that's become a Bret Witke trademark."

"He was a hipster, he knew everybody," says Joel Chen, whose JF Chen design shop on Melrose neighbored Russell Simpson Company, a mid-century design gallery where Witke and his longtime friend, gallerist Diane Rosenstein, purveyed contemporary art and 20th century design gems (think Eames, Jacobsen and and Saarinen) between 1996 and 2000.

"He had great taste, and a lot of charisma," says Rosenstein. "Before everything was digitized, he would go to the Rose Bowl flea market, estate sales, Bonham's arcade sales, and thrift shops and miraculously discover great design. He used the garage in my house to fix up his rare finds."

In 2015, the designer opened another showroom, Witke Shop, in the space of a former nail salon at the corner of Melrose and Sweetzer where, he said, "people could see what I do and the stuff I do it with." That mix might have included Ellsorth Kelly prints, African sculptures, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings armchairs, California modernist ceramics, sisal rugs, and cane shelving units all living amicably together as a group, the store seamlessly articulating sharp, if unexpected, juxtapositions across time and geography.

"There was nothing artificially eccentric about it. The glamor was subtle. He had a light hand," says Mayer Rus, West Coast editor of Architectural Digest, adding, "Bret was not a household name, but he was an éminence grise on the LA social, cultural, art, and design scene. If you were in the know, you knew Bret Witke. And he was not only known for his great taste but also his general bonhomie. He was a wonderful and an incredibly likable character."

"I knew him when I worked at Abell's Auction in the late Eighties and early Nineties," adds Adam Blackman of Blackman Cruz. "He would come to the auctions and he was really a visionary man of style and elegance. There was an Old World quality to him. He always wore white starched shirts to lunch at Angelini or Petrossian and he loved a good burger. As Rudyard Kipling would say, he walked with kings and had a common touch and I miss him."

Though he never got the chance to realize it, Witke was always thinking about manifesting a great hotel in the city he called home. "If I could find the right space, I would do it, because people don't seem to know how important the smallest details are," he told me. "Even if guests don't notice them, they feel them." But the details of his design practice are still being felt at inside Jar and Republique and the Line Hotel and in the homes of his glamorous clientele.

The stylist turned business development consultant Raymond Lee, who was an intimate friend of Witke's for over three decades, took care of him at the very end of his life when he was struggling with kidney failure. Over the years, Witke had struggled with addiction, which ultimately led to the decline of his health. "He taught me about art, design, and architecture," says Lee. "He really cared about people, and he gave unconditionally to his friends. I felt really honored to be with him to the end."

Witke is survived by his mother, Sally Witke, his brothers Todd and Scott, and an extended family of friends.