When Mr Willo Perron, the French-Canadian creative director famous for flying a Ferrari over the crowd at a Drake show, among other celebrated pop culture moments, first moved into his 1920s Mediterranean-style home in the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles, he discovered a Ralph Lauren tote bag from the 1980s that was filled with old letters chronicling the breakdown of a relationship.

“It’s kind of amazing to think that this house has been here for 100 years,” says Perron, glancing out of a large arched window that provides a view that stretches all the way down to the landmark Capitol Records Building in the heart of Los Angeles. “That’s not a lot of time if you grew up in Europe, but in Los Angeles it is. There’s a beauty in the soul of an older home.”

This is surprisingly nostalgic coming from the man whose modernist philosophy (think clean lines, concrete floors and functionality over fussy details) has made him the go-to interior designer for everyone from Stüssy to Fear of God and Roc Nation to Yeezy and Rihanna. But putting down roots in La La Land, home to the golden age of cinema, is bound to do that to you.

Perron’s property, which is situated below the scenic Lake Hollywood reservoir, is steeped in more history than most. It was one of the first houses to be built in Bryn Mawr, a real estate development to the west of Hollywoodland, as Hollywood was originally known and the iconic hilltop sign once spelt out. The sign, Perron says, was merely a block letter advertisement for the area when it was first erected on Mount Lee in 1923 and nearby Bryn Mawr also had a sign, which didn’t stand the test of time. But then Bryn Mawr doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

“The fantasy of that time was very much this Mediterranean/Moroccan/Spanish lifestyle,” says Perron, who bought the property, which spans 3,000sq ft across three floors and boasts a swimming pool, two years ago. Built into the hillside, the house is typical of many residences in the area. The rooms are large and open plan, but there are various nooks throughout the house that create the illusion of intimacy.

Perron lives alone, but shares a design studio with the graphic designer Mr Brian Roettinger in Silver Lake, where the multi-disciplinary duo work across a range of projects from video production to brand identity.

“The house felt very Spanish with its dark tinted wood floors and tile work, as well as North African details, such as the arched doorways,” he says. “Everything has a rounded edge. It’s the opposite of modernist architecture with its very polished, square edges.”

While Perron hadn’t exactly purchased a doer-upper, there was room for improvement. “I didn’t want to gut the architecture,” he says. “It was about putting my own perspective on it, so I took all of the unnecessary detail out, which made it more relaxed and kind of Zen. I get a lot of solace from light and space.”

It was out with the dark floors and black iron details and in with wooden floor-to-ceiling cabinets and “lots of places to fall asleep and chill”, including a basement-level “entertainment room” and a top floor that is dedicated to Zenning out. “This was originally two bedrooms and a bathroom and I made it into one big suite,” says Perron. “It has a walk-in bathroom with an incredible marble bathtub. I love going to the spa, so I was like, how do I bring that to my house? When I travel, that part of the house is one of the things I miss the most.”

Perron’s Pillo sofa, from a collection of furniture he recently launched, in the entertainment room is hard to miss. Designed to be “a modular system that borrows from the simple form of pillows” and comprising “three simple pieces that encourage free arrangement, finished in fabrics with a distinct look and hand feel”, it is as large, light and fluffy as a cloud. “That’s the entire purpose,” he says. “It’s like a big hug. This is a space where we watch movies. It’s very cosy and if there’s a bunch of people over, we’ll hang out down here.”

A furniture line was an inevitable next step for Perron, who first took up retail design in the early 2000s after running a record label in his native city of Montreal in Canada. Perron’s big break came when he created American Apparel’s iconic minimalist aesthetic. He then moved to California in 2006 and, after a chance meeting with Mr Kanye West and an invitation to collaborate on his 2008 Glow In The Dark tour, the rest is history. Before long, Perron was being regularly commissioned by everyone from Jay-Z to Rihanna.

“Everything I do in my life has been out of necessity,” says Perron. “I don’t ever want to make stuff just to make things. I want to make something because we feel like it needs to happen or we can’t find it.”

His Dino table (made from Tadelakt, a traditional Moroccan plaster) is a perfect example, complemented in the dining room by a set of chairs from Finnish wood company, Vaarnii. “We started playing around with plaster really because I couldn’t find anything that I liked,” he says. “We pretty much made this one just for the house.”

There is a noticeable lack of clutter in the house. There is little colour, not much art and there are no book shelves. It’s intentional, of course. What Perron lacks in objects, he certainly makes up for in purpose.

“I made a decision a while ago that I didn’t want things [in my home] to take up headspace,” he says. “I didn’t want to have to upkeep a big art collection or a bunch of books. Every time you walk past books, you’re like, ‘I should be reading more. I’ve not finished that one or started this one.’ I thought, I only want to have utilitarian things, so even if they get a bit fucked up, it’s not the end of the world.

“A great gift of modernism is that a lot of things were built in a very utilitarian way and so I don’t own things that are fragile. My life, personally, doesn’t want that.” Perron cites a green chair by the 1960s Italian designer Mr Joe Colombo in the living room as an example. “The paint is chipping off,” he says. “It’s a beautiful piece, but I’m not precious about it.”

As well as focusing on furniture, Perron is busy spinning other plates, including launching his latest Stüssy store in Paris, “creeping back into doing live shows” and designing office spaces for brands such as Fear of God, handling the stark, oversized furniture and furnishings for Mr Jerry Lorenzo’s recently opened Downtown LA offices. His stripped-back design for West’s Yeezy studio in California has similar echoes of the bare aesthetic Perron vibes with at home. “One of the big parts of my practice is to feel and study the subject, whether it’s a person or brand,” he says.

No wonder Perron needs all the headspace he can get. “We all put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” he says. “I have a really rich and heavy work life. I go home to be able to breathe and think. We want to achieve a lot, we want to be well read and cultured and well informed, but I think we have to give ourselves a moment to take our foot off the gas a little bit. And home seems like the perfect place to do that.”

In the words of one of the Hollywood greats, there is no place like it.