TREASURE TROVE
An eye for style and a storage unit filled with mementoes take this heritage loft around the world
Mementoes gathered during years of travel make a heritage Auckland apartment feel warm and inviting.
Floods of natural light and a strong connection with the outside aren’t always strong features of inner-city apartments. But they’re two of the elements that make Jessica Dine’s Auckland loft apartment something special – along with the fact that Jessica’s flair for interior design has transformed the space into an eclectic treasure trove that showcases her collectables from all around the world. She rents the large second-floor apartment in a heritage building, so Jessica hasn’t been able to choose paint colours or wallpapers to create her dream home, but she’s done something more difficult – made her travelogue of belongings fit in the space. The result is a full but curated apartment where you could expect to look out one of the large windows onto Central Park or smell the waft of Parisian baking up from the street.
The apartment is Jessica’s New Zealand haven, after years of living and working overseas, discovered through a little bit of old-fashioned snooping. When the charity worker first returned to New Zealand, she stayed in another, much smaller, apartment in the building. The door of her current apartment was open one day as she passed, affording a good peek.
“I was just blown away by how big and beautiful it was, especially compared to the studio I was in. It was massive with all these windows and fireplaces and wooden floors.”
The high ornate ceilings, timber mouldings and iron-framed arched windows offer a glimpse of the building’s historical purpose as a clothing warehouse and as home to several other small businesses in the 1880s.
Even though the apartment, which she shares with puppy Flo, is just “one and a bit” bedrooms with a kitchen and bathroom/laundry, most tenants’ belongings would have looked lost in the commercial-sized space. Not Jessica’s.
When she moved in, in late 2020, she was accompanied by a large truck filled with belongings that had been in storage since she returned to New Zealand after five years of living and working in Dubai in the Middle East. “When I was unpacking I felt like I was just putting pieces here, there and wherever. Then I stepped back and thought ‘wow’,” she says. “I actually think my furniture was made to be in this apartment.”
Even the colour scheme of grey, khaki green and pale mustard yellow walls worked. “I really wasn’t sure I was going to be okay about the yellow on the walls. But once everything was in I found everything had gone together beautifully. Those yellow walls really work. They add a massive amount of character.
“It was a really good day when I could finally have my things out of storage all around me in this lovely apartment,” Jessica says.
A good portion of those items were found on shopping trips during her time in Dubai, once Jessica realised how easy and fast it was to travel to other destinations from her Middle Eastern base. French flea markets and Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar were particular favourites, along with the local Trade Me equivalent Dubizzle. “It’s fun. You can find treasures from all over the world there. I bought some cool things for upcycling.
“It took me a good 12 months to settle into life in Dubai. It’s such a culture shock. The lifestyle is just so different. It’s pretty much all apartment living and
during the hot months of the year you’re always inside. Then I realised how close everything was to travel to. That made me really commit to staying for a bit... It’s possible I have a shopping problem,” she laughs.
After five years of the jet-set lifestyle, though, it was time to come home. “It’s very much ‘work hard, play hard, then work harder, play harder’. I got to the point where I was starting to feel burnt out. It was a pretty crazy five years.”
As well as her cornucopia of global treasures, Jessica also brought home a newfound love of apartment living. “It’s very different from how I grew up in rural Hawke’s Bay. We always had tons of space and were always outside. When I was first in Dubai I did find it weird to be indoors all the time. Then you just get used to it.”
Now Jessica loves the bustle of inner-city life. “I do like the drama, hype and chaos of being in the thick of it. Then you come up here, and it’s like a sanctuary.”
It turns out Jessica’s flair for design runs in the family. Her maternal grandmother was a great collector, there are artists and creators throughout the family, and her brother Matthew is a Melbourne-based interior designer. “I have been told I have the worst taste in my whole family,” Jessica laughs. “I did go through some dodgy stages. There was an Eiffel Tower stage at one point when I was younger.”
Now Jessica describes her design style as “eclectic – definitely not minimalist... I just have a love of old things, and I think I’ve been heavily influenced in my choices by my grandmother, and my mother. I’ve been very fortunate to have always been surrounded by beautiful things and creative people.
“I don’t really collect things based on any unified vision or plan. I just see something and I think ‘I must have that in my life.’”