A Russian designer and American businessman now feel right at home in Auckland.
Location was key to making an American and a Russian feel right at home in Auckland
When Russian-born Olga Skorik first settled in New Zealand she nearly went bonkers. Six months living in Coatesville with a new baby was too much for this former banker. “We had to drive miles to get anywhere and when I looked out the window it was just fields,” she said. “The country is not for me. I’m a city girl through and through.”
Eleven years later, following a four-year stint in Moscow, she and her American businessman husband Jeffrey Costello are back with their two boys, Sasha, 12, and Nikita, nine.
And Olga is loving it. That may be because she is now in the middle of Remuera in Auckland, living in a house that once belonged to the well-known and enormously sociable restaurateur Emerald Gilmour, former owner of Clichys in the 1970s and 80s.
“The number of people who have said, ‘Oh, I went to a party there once,’ you wouldn’t believe,” she says. “Everyone knows this house.”
Emerald Gilmour actually dropped in once, before the renovations started, and took some favourite old patterned curtains with her. “She was charming,” says Olga.
Chances are Emerald and all the former partygoers wouldn’t recognise the house if they visited again. The couple have completely remodelled the place, extending it, adding a new kitchen, outdoor cabana and outdoor room along the way.
They chose the house because it had an American look and only later discovered it was built in the 1870s by a man who had lived for five years in the US and wanted to build an American-style house.
Redecorating the large American colonial inspired home was an opportunity for Olga to flex her interior design muscles. While in Moscow she had studied interior design and followed that up with other courses overseas, and she now runs Ermitage Design.
The house is decorated largely in neutral tones with deliberate colour accents, often cushions or fabrics, chosen to complement a favourite painting in the room. Olga has opted for pops of what she calls “poisonous yellow” echoing the yellow in a painting by Russian artist Maya Majkova.
She has an extensive collection of Russian art and artefacts but since being in New Zealand, she and Jeffrey have also begun collecting New Zealand artists. She rotates the works – and the matching cushions – throughout the house.
Olga says interior design is hugely popular in Russia. Although much of the population lives in apartments, they take special care with their interiors and often change their decor every three to four years. As for styles, Olga says they like everything from lavish Miami-style interiors to minimalist decorating.
‘THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SAID, “OH, I WENT TO A PARTY THERE ONCE,” YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE’
She likes neither. She favours subtlety and natural materials such as Belgian linen for curtains, wooden floors and wallpaper made from bamboo. “Natural materials have more life than synthetics,” she says. “Just feel them.”
On the other hand, she’s a big fan of her faux lilies that look and feel so authentic it’s hard to believe they are made of latex.
She is also currently decorating their holiday home in Queenstown and a home the couple are building in Omaha, north of Auckland.
Her home makeovers had been so successful that parents at her sons’ school began to ask her advice for their own homes. Her husband politely pointed out he couldn’t buy more houses for her to do up so perhaps she should start an interior design business.
“At first I said, ‘I don’t know how,’ and he said, ‘Nobody knows anything. Just do it.’ So I did and now I wish I had done it years ago,” she says. “It’s so rewarding and fun.”
The arts are important to this family, evident by the number of guitars around the house (Jeffrey plays and collects them), the baby grand in the lounge played by Nikita and the framed children’s artworks hanging on the wall. They even continue the Costello family tradition of making their own lino-cut Christmas cards, a practice that dates back five generations.
Books are also a big feature, in both Russian and English as the boys speak fluent Russian. They attend Russian after-school classes and also spend a term each year with their Russian grandparents who then spend the summer in New Zealand in an apartment built over the garage.
‘It’s great. They are with us but completely independent. They can do what they like, even cook their Russian cabbage, so they are happy.”
Olga says there are 15,000 Russians living in Auckland. She has gathered around her a lot of compatriots such as her Russian cushion maker, an upholsterer, a nanny, a decorator, a tailor and even her hairdresser.
“I wasn’t looking for them especially but once you fall into a crowd who can talk in your language and are kindred spirits because of our shared culture, it just happens.”