Name: Elsa Mehary
Occupation: Designer behind the jewelry line, Mehary, and art director
The space: A large two-bedroom brownstone storefront in Brooklyn, New York City
Elsa Mehary is the kind of girl who doesn’t let overweight luggage or small air cabins stand in her way when it comes to scoring a good apartment find. “I can remember being 19-years-old and hand carrying a large glass lantern from Cairo back on the plane because it was too fragile to pack in my luggage,” she says of one of the many conversation-starting details in her impressively curated pad. “But now, the same lamp can be found in SoHo or a store like West Elm, imported for half the price and minus the story of adventure in an intricate maze of bazaars,” she adds.
Elsa has lived in her unusually large apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn for 15 years and she’s spent that time filling the place with carefully chosen figures and textiles she’s picked up traveling to places such as Bali, India and Tulum. Many people talk about wanting to create a home that transports a person somewhere else. But Elsa has actually pulled it off. “I think of my apartment as a serene oasis in the center of chaos,” she says.
She’s achieved an overall look and feeling of zen through a mix of spiritual figures and colors that she found in near and far-flung places. There’s the gold head of Buddha she found in Chinatown: “It’s really heavy but I love the serenity it brings to the space.” And an ornate cross that lies next to a box of Bach flower remedies imported from Israel. “I was born in Ethiopia and plan on returning there this year to visit all the amazing churches built into the ground in Lalibela. The cross is a traditional Orthodox relic from Addis Adabaa originally owned by my mom,” she explains.
“The look of my apartment is constantly changing,” Elsa admits. But the sense of calm never changes. “I incorporate the feng shi principles in determining location of color throughout the house.”
(l-r): Juliaca knit stocking, Maison Martin Margiela By L’Atelier snow globe,Venini vase, Moroccan tea glasses and a Cire Trudon Nazareth candle
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond persevered through a volatile housing market, months of renovations and a sinking bathroom ceiling to get to her dream apartment. The end result is a labor of love that reflects her African-influenced style.
Name: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Occupation: Novelist and Senior Manager at Bluefly
The space: A renovated one bedroom in Queens, New York City
“It’s a pre-war place with an Eighties sensibility and a bit of a Seventies look – but it’s not tacky,” says first-time homeowner Brew-Hammond of her place in Jackson Heights. The author of “Powder Necklace,” a novel loosely based on her experiences in a Ghanaian boarding school, was originally looking for a swanky, modern space. But after the market tanked she was forced to make some compromises.
“I’m a bit of a princess, so I wanted everything in my apartment to be perfect the day I moved in,” she admits.
Instead it took her six to eight months to find a fixer-upper that fit her budget. “It had these beautiful wood floors that needed cleaning and a kitchen and bathroom that completely needed gutting. Oh and the bathroom ceiling caved in,” she says.
So she called in a contractor and then set about personalizing her place with details that reflect her Ghanaian heritage: wooden soldiers that she bought during a visit to Africa (“the customs guards at JFK airport scanned them six or seven times and I was like, ‘There’s no cocaine’,”), a hand painted Lucas Risé cabinet and colorful rugs. “I’m glad I was forced to take my time because now I’ve got what I want on an affordable budget. And every time I walk into my apartment, I smile and say to myself, ‘This is my place.’”
-photos by Kashish das Shrestha
Not counting the openings I caught during New York Fashion Week, I’ve missed out on the bulk of fall’s art happenings, including Frieze, due to my beginning graduate school. But the two openings I was most disappointed to miss include my husband’s and that of family friend Rashaad Newsome. About a year ago, Rashaad came over to London to learn the practice of heraldry and we had a chance to talk about it over dinner afterwards. So it’s interesting to see the end result of all that preparation, which marries the centuries old craft with contemporary hip hop imagery and a level of ornamentation that is right in line with the current mood in fashion (ornate brooches, rhinestone embellishments, the list goes on.) His collages end up being completely maximal in a Nicki Minaj meets aw ‘11 Dolce & Gabbana meets Elizabethan decorative arts kind of way.
Luella Lane and Will Lebens’s London flat is steeped in jaw dropping family history. Add the couple’s eclectic contemporary style and you’ve got a home that combines the best of several worlds.
Names: Luella Lane and Will Lebens
Occupation: European Style Manager of Urban Outfitters Europe and Managing Director of Airlock, respectively
The space: A large two-bedroom loft in Shoreditch, London
Most of us buy copies of historic, worldly looking artifacts from mass market places like Crate & Barrel or Zara Home. But in Luella Lane and Will Lebens’s flat, the coronation chairs that their two-year-old daughter, Mila, is playing under, are real (from Queen Elizabeth II’s, to be exact.) When Lane says it took “three generations” to decorate her place, she means it. Her grandfather, Sir Peter Smithers, was a former member of Parliament, famous botanist and the spy who inspired Ian Fleming’s most famous character, “James Bond.” And her grandmother, Lady Dojean Smithers, counted Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco among her friends. Meanwhile, Lane, who art directs for Urban Outfitters, and Lebens, who runs an Emmy-winning digital agency, are overachievers in the creative department. They marry their inherited family treasures such as antique Egyptian stools, vintage Louis Vuitton trunks and a Chinese table with a sharp mix of contemporary pieces that reflect their own unique taste, like the leather hares Lane bought for Lebens’s birthday to celebrate the coming arrival of their second daughter, who will be born in the year of the rabbit. “A lot of what we have has been passed down to us,” Lane says of her family’s Wes Anderson film-worthy background. “But otherwise, we just pick up bits and pieces from our travels. Mainly, anything that’s unique and has a story or is handmade,” she says. “It’s great having all of these amazing things, but also a responsibility. I won’t know how to pack it all up when we move!”
Photo credit: Nick Cunard and Shiraz Ksaiba
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