Newport Dunes

September 18, 2026|Gaurav Nanda

Last Saturday we were at Newport Dunes for the Pacific Wine and Food Classic. One day, full California sun, a waterfront lawn with the bay directly behind it, hundreds of guests from the Orange County restaurant and design community moving through the space from open to close.

Davis Ink, the interior design firm that has been one of our favorite collaborators for years, designed and decorated the entire event. They called us because they needed outdoor furniture that could do what outdoor furniture rarely does: look genuinely beautiful in a real event environment, hold up through six hours of continuous use, and disappear into the experience the way good furniture should.

Here is what we brought and what happened.

Image from https://pacificwineandfood.com/

The Setup

Under the mature fig trees along the waterfront lawn, Davis Ink created a lounge area using our Peacock Lounge Chairs in white with yellow and orange cushions, paired with gold drum tables. The chairs sat directly on the grass with Newport Dunes bay behind them and the Newport Beach bluffs across the water. The wire geometry stayed open and light even as the chairs filled with guests — the space breathed the way a lawn should breathe, without furniture closing it down.

Along the event perimeter, white Lucy Counter Stools pulled up to black high-top bar tables under the trees, giving guests a place to land for a real conversation rather than standing with drinks at an angle. Two people deep in conversation under a fig tree with a white wire stool and a black table is the specific image that tells you an event worked.

On the sandy path between zones, the Tube Bench in white perforated aluminum sat in the dappled tree shadow as both seating and sculpture. Unoccupied, it looked exactly right. Occupied, it gave guests a place to rest between the wine stations and chef tasting areas.

What the Day Actually Tested

A wine and food festival is not a controlled environment. It is six hours of direct sun, coastal air off the water, guests sitting and standing and moving chairs around, setting glasses and bags and plates on surfaces that were not designed to be tables. Children. Crowds. The full spectrum of what outdoor furniture encounters in daily hospitality use.

Nothing required adjustment. Nothing required intervention. At the end of the day the chairs looked the same as they did at setup. The wire cleaned with a wipe. The powder coat held its color through the afternoon sun the same way it holds through a season at a coastal restaurant.

This is what BIFMA-certified outdoor furniture actually means at a real event. Not a rating on a spec sheet. A day like this one.

The View

White Peacock Lounge Chairs with yellow cushions on a green lawn, Newport Dunes bay directly behind the white picket fence, kayaks and paddleboards on the water, palm trees and the bluffs beyond. The chairs did not compete with that view. They framed it.

Wire furniture works in a waterfront setting for the same reason it works in a densely populated restaurant: the openness of the form does not close the space. A solid chair in front of that view becomes an obstacle. A wire chair becomes part of the composition.

The Collaboration

Davis Ink has been creating environments with what they call a WTF twist since they opened — the kind of design sensibility that puts an enormous fruit wall behind the event entrance and pairs it with balloons and a red carpet and a Bend Goods logo because they genuinely believe the furniture is part of the design story, not separate from it.

The Bend Goods brand appears alongside Davis Ink and the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance on the sponsor wall at the event entrance. That placement says more about how Davis Ink thinks about furniture than any brief could.

We are grateful for the partnership and already looking forward to the next one.