For artist and equipment designer Christina Wang, trend ought to at all times embody a little bit of cheek. Her Noodles scarf, as an illustration, options whimsical illustrations of carb-y favorites like beef pho and lasagna organized in an Hermès-worthy array. Her Bag Targets silk scarf, in the meantime, showcases “It” holdalls together with a Chanel backpack, a Dior tote, a Louis Vuitton trunk—and an Ikea Frakta. The latter design might be a metaphor for Wang’s freshly overhauled four-bedroom, four-bathroom residence in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood—a venue the place trend, perform, and enjoyable collide head-on. Working example: The home equipment are bubble gum pink. “The very last thing I would like is a very monotone, ‘secure’ condo,” Wang declares.
Wang and her husband, Brian, had bought two adjoining residences within the constructing, one in 2011, one other 5 years later, and wished to merge them into their dream residence. For Wang, that meant a really supreme kitchen and cozy, fanciful areas the place she may make reminiscences together with her husband and two youngsters, Connor and Dylan.
Enter New York–based mostly design studio Le Whit, helmed by Liza Curtiss and Corey Kingston. Wang was drawn to the duo not just for their simple personalities (“I may foresee us being pals,” Wang shares), but additionally as a result of she was desirous to collaborate with two fellow feminine entrepreneurs. And the sensation was mutual: “It was actually clear that [Christina] cherished an exuberant shade palette and wasn’t afraid to simply go there—which is at all times fairly thrilling for designers,” Curtiss says. “Some purchasers, you actually have to drag them out of the grey scale.”
A key theme in Le Whit’s design resolution, each for the ornament (overseen by Curtiss) and the inside structure (Kingston’s purview) was introducing comfortable curvature wherever potential—a method that Wang first encountered whereas touring Antoni Gaudí’s buildings whereas in Barcelona as a university scholar at Brown. “He just about by no means designed with 90-degree angles,” she remembers. “No sharp edges. Every thing is curved to imitate the softness of nature. I used to be at all times very taken by that as a result of every part we dwell in is so sq..”
That softness is obvious as quickly as you enter the subtly luxurious entry, which introduces guests to the house’s residents with a customized mural by Maine-based artist (and Roman and Williams go-to) Dean Barger. The bucolic panorama contains depictions of Wang, her husband, and youngsters. Wang’s canine, Finn, and horse, Don, have been represented within the scene, too. “It’s like out within the nation on a misty morning stroll,” Wang says. “You stroll in and it simply feels ethereal.”
From there, the residence blooms into distinctive branches—Brian and Christina’s wing, the youngsters’s wing, and an entertaining/dwelling wing—by a collection of dramatic arched hallways (every options pocket doorways). “Once you stroll into the condo, it doesn’t reveal every part instantly,” explains Wang. “There’s a way of discovery.”
The arch motif continues within the customized casework (created in collaboration with Aries Builders) that defines the mixed eating room/kitchen in addition to the dwelling areas. “What we at all times wished so as to add in have been parts of outdated New York, like these Artwork Deco or artwork moderne curves, a variety of lovely wooden molding, and exquisite tile,” Kingston explains.
One of the crucial placing areas is, as enthusiastic residence cook dinner Wang desired, the kitchen. “They actually dwell in that house,” Curtiss says. The designers rejiggered the ground plan in order that the cooking house, in addition to the eating space, abuts a set of home windows, a transfer that affords mealtime Manhattan views and entry to a terrace. The kitchen’s La Cornue vary is certainly one of many pink punctuations all through the house—although, maybe, probably the most shocking. “We have been deliberate in regards to the pop of ultrafeminine with the range,” Curtiss says. It was our consumer’s dream range—she’d mentioned it together with her household years earlier than, really!” A dramatic marble backsplash, blond wooden, and clear traces “assist steer the pink away from something frilly,” she provides.
The first suite continues the house’s curved language—however with darker, sexier tones. The toilet and bed room are lushly adorned, in live performance, with wealthy blues (together with, Sherwin-Williams’s Naval paint) and reds. The toilet’s “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains” from de Gournay ups the drama. “I actually wished a de Gournay wallpaper,” Wang says, joking, “that, to me, was the mark of an grownup residence.”
Her enduring fondness for trend, appropriately, has been sewn into the scheme. In one of many powder rooms, the ground’s multicolored Italian tiling references the Céline shops of Phoebe Philo’s reign; in one other, a tiger-themed wallpaper by Gucci. Within the sitting room, India Mahdavi’s Botero chair is roofed in Dedar’s Say Goodbye Flora Pomponette material — the identical sample, Wang notes, that’s in Dior’s new Paris flagship. As for the pink botanical wallpaper masking the partitions? That’s a Wang unique, a sample so stylish that it might be splashed throughout certainly one of her scarves.