London’s Cheyne Stroll offers a sedate streetscape that bears no witness, preserve some blue English Heritage plaques embedded in different façades, to its daredevil history. To the redbrick Georgian and Queen Anne properties and apartment structures that line this Thames-facet street in Chelsea, all way of innovative iconoclasts since the 3rd quarter of the 19th century have gravitated. Querulous painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler bunked listed here, as did dandified tastemaker Christopher Gibbs, actor Laurence Olivier, and a couple of of the Rolling Stones, as well as Marianne Faithfull.
“All of Chelsea is a fairy tale for me,” states Patrick Mele, a young decorator who is based mostly in New York Metropolis but appears straight out of the Cheyne Wander playbook, with a tousled mop of dim hair foaming over an angular encounter that is pure Egon Schiele. “My best buddy escalating up was English, so I have constantly been drawn to that Anglo sensibility. And I made use of to occur right here a ten years ago, when I labored for Ralph Lauren, to work on the suppliers.” So, when Sara Tayeb-Khalifa and her spouse, Hussein Khalifa, substantial-fived Mele’s zesty decoration of a bed room in their Manhattan apartment, they made available to mail him back across the pond to revamp the Cheyne Walk flat they had owned considering that the early 1990s.
“I had performed it space by area by home, but practically nothing matched—plus, I no longer wanted secure,” explains the exquisite Tayeb-Khalifa, a former Phillips executive who is partnering with sustainable-vogue designer Jussara Lee on collections of T-shirts and cushions. “I desired to make it happy: joyful hues, pleased residence.” To that stop, her conversations with Mele have been peppered with references to Auntie Mame, Overlook Havisham, and the ceilings of aged French bistros, stained “a color that reminds you of cigarettes, wine, terrible alcohol, and a lot more cigarettes,” Tayeb-Khalifa says with a giggle. —Mitchell Owens
When requested what an individual unfamiliar with his biography may possibly surmise just by walking by way of his Melbourne residence, Troye Sivan remains sanguine: “I’d hope they’d assume that I’m an unpretentious dude, probably a little bit eccentric, a person who enjoys artwork and structure, an individual devoted to his family—and unquestionably the truth that I’m gay,” suggests the wildly well known 25-12 months-old Australian singer-songwriter and actor.
Certainly, if that hypothetical visitor took place to be a persnickety design and style snob, they’d surely 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 influenced by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé and the bespoke, Memphis-flavored appointments of the bathtub and powder rooms. On a further amount, even so, it would also be crystal crystal clear that this is the household of a person with the cultivation and confidence to figure out that great style is as significantly about suitability and nuance as it is about important objects and artworks.
“Troye is an exceptionally savvy collaborator. In our earliest discussions, he talked about materiality, how he needed to sense in his household, about the scent and the seem and the light. It was so a great deal extra than just a several rather factors he found on Pinterest,” recalls designer David Flack of neighborhood firm Flack Studio, Sivan’s companion in the delicate, sophisticated reimagining of the singer’s Victorian-era house.
The residence in question is a genuine architectural gem. Erected in 1869 as a handball court, the making was transformed into a brick factory in 1950 and then subsequently reworked into a home in 1970 by renowned Australian architect John Mockridge, a fixture of the nearby artwork-and-design scene. The conversion is stated to be the 1st adaptive reuse challenge of its kind in the city. “You can picture Mockridge and his mates sitting down close to drinking whiskey and talking about art. I preferred to preserve that bohemian spirit and honor the first architecture although generating one thing that feels like me,” Sivan says. —Mayer Rus
