London’s Cheyne Stroll presents a sedate streetscape that bears no witness, avoid wasting blue English Heritage plaques embedded in numerous façades, to its daredevil historical past. To the redbrick Georgian and Queen Anne homes and condo buildings that line this Thames-side avenue in Chelsea, all method of inventive iconoclasts because the third quarter of the nineteenth century have gravitated. Querulous painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler bunked right here, as did dandified tastemaker Christopher Gibbs, actor Laurence Olivier, and some of the Rolling Stones, plus Marianne Faithfull.
“All of Chelsea is a fairy story for me,” says Patrick Mele, a younger decorator who is predicated in New York Metropolis however seems straight out of the Cheyne Stroll playbook, with a tousled mop of darkish hair foaming above an angular face that’s pure Egon Schiele. “My greatest buddy rising up was English, so I’ve at all times been drawn to that Anglo sensibility. And I used to come back right here a decade in the past, once I labored for Ralph Lauren, to work on the shops.” So, when Sara Tayeb-Khalifa and her husband, Hussein Khalifa, high-fived Mele’s zesty ornament of a bed room of their Manhattan condo, they provided to ship him again throughout the pond to revamp the Cheyne Stroll flat they’d owned because the early Nineteen Nineties.
“I had completed it room by room by room, however nothing matched—plus, I not needed protected,” explains the elegant Tayeb-Khalifa, a former Phillips government who’s partnering with sustainable-fashion designer Jussara Lee on collections of T-shirts and cushions. “I needed to make it pleased: pleased colours, pleased house.” To that finish, her discussions with Mele have been peppered with references to Auntie Mame, Miss Havisham, and the ceilings of previous French bistros, stained “a shade that reminds you of cigarettes, wine, dangerous alcohol, and extra cigarettes,” Tayeb-Khalifa says with fun. —Mitchell Owens
When requested what somebody unfamiliar along with his biography may surmise just by strolling by means of his Melbourne house, Troye Sivan stays sanguine: “I’d hope they’d suppose that I’m an unpretentious man, possibly a bit eccentric, somebody who loves artwork and design, somebody dedicated to his household—and positively the truth that I’m homosexual,” says the wildly widespread 25-year-old Australian singer-songwriter and actor.
Certainly, if that hypothetical customer occurred to be a persnickety design snob, they’d absolutely not fail to register the array of treasures by the likes of Percival Lafer, Ettore Sottsass, Tobia Scarpa, and Marios Bellini and Botta; the cabinetry particulars impressed by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé; and the bespoke, Memphis-flavored appointments of the tub and powder rooms. On a deeper stage, nevertheless, it could even be crystal clear that that is the house of somebody with the cultivation and confidence to acknowledge that nice design is as a lot about suitability and nuance as it’s about necessary objects and artworks.
“Troye is an extremely savvy collaborator. In our earliest conversations, he talked about materiality, how he needed to really feel in his home, concerning the scent and the sound and the sunshine. It was a lot greater than just some fairly issues he discovered on Pinterest,” recollects designer David Flack of native agency Flack Studio, Sivan’s accomplice within the delicate, refined reimagining of the singer’s Victorian-era house.
The home in query is a real architectural gem. Erected in 1869 as a handball court docket, the constructing was transformed right into a brick manufacturing facility in 1950 after which subsequently remodeled right into a residence in 1970 by famend Australian architect John Mockridge, a fixture of the native art-and-design scene. The conversion is alleged to be the primary adaptive reuse venture of its type within the metropolis. “You may image Mockridge and his associates sitting round ingesting whiskey and speaking about artwork. I needed to protect that bohemian spirit and honor the unique structure whereas creating one thing that seems like me,” Sivan says. —Mayer Rus
