Fifth Avenue - New York City
This is a story of two best friends, John and Amanda, and two clients, a style-obsessed husband and wife.
On the same night in 2015, the husband reached out to John Fondas and the wife reached out to me with the same request: to design their new house in Southampton.
The husband had seen an AD story on John’s house in Lyford Cay; the wife had been keen on my stories in House Beautiful. They had no idea we were lifelong friends. The upshot is that we have been working together on their projects ever since.
John and I jumped for joy at the opportunity to work on the house in Southampton. A bit of perfection from a bygone era, it is an immaculately proportioned beach house on the best street with a great living room and three small bedrooms. Our clients have talent and Old World elegance and are likely the only folks who would not have succumbed to the temptation to tear it down.
Fast-forward to 2021 Manhattan: Our track record with this couple led to an unimaginable dream project. As luck would have it, Sir John Richardson, the notable Picasso expert and diarist, had lived in their building on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In the mid-1990s, Richardson engaged Ernesto Buch, a Cuban classical architect, to build a veritable English country house in a loft conversion in this building. The spaces are impeccable and the classical details dazzle.
In this hallway, the walls are covered in Quadrille’s Lyford Trellis, a nod to its designer, my friend Tom Scheerer. Decorative painter Hayden Gregg was brought in to enliven the elevator door and bookshelves with a tortoiseshell finish.
In the primary bedroom, a soft green Brunschwig & Fils silk backs the hand-carved bed and curtains the windows. The bedding is from Leontine Linens, and the walls are covered in Schumacher’s Brighton Pavilion wallpaper. The wall-to-wall jute rug adds a casual, island touch.
Rumored to be from Versailles, the impressively scaled bed was restored with a cerused finish. A Manuel Canovas linen was used for its hangings, headboards, and spread. The clients’ own silk curtain panels were reworked for the space. A warm white grasscloth covers the walls and a sky-blue striate carpet by Stark is underfoot.
“A bright red lacquered cabinet, designed as a chic solution for storing garbage cans, gleams against the monochrome sgraffito wallpaper.
An unexpected taxidermy leopard appears ready to pounce from its lofty perch.”
