For Trina Turk, Los Angeles has become the undeniable epicenter of her wonderfully whimsical world.

“Being in Southern California is about the climate and the landscape, and the architecture to a certain extent,” Silverlake-based Turk said over steel cut oatmeal and coffee at eastside outpost of Square One Dining. “L.A. is the cultural melting pot of what’s happening here, which has been really important to what we’re doing.”

The climate, color, texture, print and pattern play not only into her own life, but also into the identity of the brand. Those prints have become a signature of sorts. She described growing up in California’s Bay Area in the Sixties  and Seventies as a very colorful time. “To me, color and optimism are kind of the same thing in a way,” Turk said.

“We ask, ‘Is this print optimistic?’ and if it’s not, it’s not us.”

Strong prints have always been a cornerstone of Turk’s design ethos, having cut her design cloth at OP, an original Cali surf brand where she worked with original Japanese and Southern California printers. She took that knowledge with her when it was time for her own collection, which paid off.

Today, Turk’s prints conjure the retro world that she has created complete with a direct line to Palm Springs, the desert destination that continues to speak to her – and where it all started.

In the early 1990s, the designer watched as her husband Jonathan Skow, a fashion stylist at the time (now the designer for Mr. Turk), would go to Palm Springs, which became  a favorite destination for fashion shoots at the time. “And then we realized there was nowhere for these people to shop…nowhere,” Turk said. Serendipitously, a storefront designed by Albert Frey soon became the first Trina Turk retail space.

Vintage elements, still so prevalent to Palm Springs, never lost their importance to Turk. “When I first started the company in 1995, I had Slim Aarons’ ’Poolside Gossip‘ on the bulletin board, and I thought, I want to do something like that.”

Turk’s research of all things retro extends beyond the fanned leaves of Palm Springs though. The designer is also an avid vintage shopper, amassing a storied collection of reference points and an enviably skilled eye. “When I thrift-shopped in the early 1980s, we were really into new wave fashion and the Twenties and Thirties, and you could actually find stuff from that time,” she recalled.

Today, Turk admits the regular dates at the Sunday flea markets are no longer as high of a priority. For clothes, she likes A Current Affair, and the show at the Pickwick in Burbank, among others. Many of her purchases have found their way to the vintage room at her design offices, organized for inspiration and referenced by category and print.

But as often as she looks to the past, for Turk, the changes in the industry keep her looking ahead. “Things have changed a lot more in the last five years than the first years I was in business, just in the way people shop and with online shopping,” she admitted. “That’s not the fun part of what we do at all, but we’re competing with everyone from the lowest end to the highest end because people’s closets are so mixed up now in terms of what they buy, so you have to make sure there’s value in what you’re creating.”

Said value remains at the heart of everything Turk does, from her commitment to materials to translating her signature prints to home décor items and her wildly popular swim collection, which is the perfect extension for the sun-drenched and desert-facing brand.