Fashion writer Derek Blasberg lives life in full colour – and his irreverently chic, New York apartment is testament to that
Globetrotting writer and fashion-world insider derek blasberg conjures the perfect setting for his next chapter – a sophisticated upper east side apartment in new York
Imoved from a small town in Missouri to new York in 2000, the year I turned 18. That means that last year, 2018, was the moment
I had lived here for exactly as long as I had lived there. I didn’t realise it at the time, but buying this apartment (my first real apartment) on new York’s upper east side was the ultimate inflexion point in morphing from an overachieving Midwestern teenager in a small town into a new York city professional.
Consistency is the word I’d use to describe my first 18 years: I lived in the same bedroom in the same house in the same suburban neighbourhood all my life. (Boring is another word, but it’s not as polite.) By the time I left, I had wallpapered the room – including the ceiling – with intricate collages made with cutouts from fashion magazines, filled the bookshelves with biographies of old hollywood stars and Jackie Kennedy, and scribbled ‘new York or bust’ on my white cotton bedsheets with a black felt-tip pen.
In new York, my experiences in the property market were scattered. Literally. My first-ever address was a new York university halls of residence. From there I moved to Brooklyn; a hovel in soho; a Lower Manhattan high-rise; and, just before I moved into this place, a charming prewar building on the West side that featured the ultimate metropolitan extravagance: a doorman. To each apartment, I’d drag all my earthly possessions, which consisted of clothes, clothes, and more clothes, and a burgeoning collection of embroidered pillows.
The thrill – if you want to call it that – of living in the city is that you never know what you’re going to get. sometimes you’re lucky like I was with the West side pad, which had hardwood floors, a walk-in closet, and an insanely low rent. (In fact, that place was so cheap that when I finished renovations on this apartment I was tempted to renew my old lease just because I can never say no to a good deal.) other times you’re not so lucky, like the time my ex suddenly moved out in the middle of our shared lease, meaning I had to come up with twice as much money every month. he took all the pots and pans and my eames lounge chair but left the framed photos of us together.
You have to roll with the punches in new York. could I have ever predicted my dream house would be on the upper east side? no way. I ended up here because two things changed in my early 30s: first, I met nick Brown, my longterm boyfriend, who grew up in the ’hood. after we decided to buy a place together, he opened my eyes to local charms, like strolls in central Park; coffees at quaint, overpriced cafés; and quiet night sounds that didn’t feature bar fights and sirens. and second, on the upper east side, this kind of apartment was, quite simply, less expensively priced per square metre than similar ones on the West side and in parts of Brooklyn.
An estate agent didn’t show us the place – we heard about it by eavesdropping. When I walked in I immediately had a good feeling: I had fantasised about a sunken living room ever since I saw Bette davis’s apartment in All About Eve. also, there was enough space to build an elaborate ‘cloffice’, a cute word estate
agents invented for a closet that doubles as an office, and a gossip room, a cosy nest I devised in which to sit with friends and share secrets. The apartment had languished on the market for a few years, and when our offer was accepted in late 2016 I was equally excited and terrified. nothing feels more real than a mortgage.
Contracts signed we assembled our dream team: architectural designers Yaiza armbruster and Marina dayton and decorator Virginia Tupker. Things moved swiftly because our design directive was clear: a classic new York residence (which was a few steps from central Park and was built in the 1920s), layered in youthful modernism. The heavy lifts included combining two small maids’ quarters to create the gossip room and shifting a hallway to better organise the layout of the master bedroom, guest bedroom, and aforementioned cloffice. My request for a secret passage behind a mirror in the entrance hall to my desk required some clever engineering, and I love that it ended up resembling a glamorous submarine hatch.
I know it sounds corny, but much of the design came to me in dreams. once I woke up in the middle of the night and emailed Virginia about a vision of looking down at a Vladimir Kagan-style sofa centred in the living room. By the time I woke up, she had sketched it out. I also dreamed of a guest bedroom in pastel pink, a gilded French desk, and an island in the closet to be used as a base of operations for packing and unpacking luggage, which I do often as the head of fashion and beauty at Youtube. It’s always Fashion Week somewhere.
A small-town boy moving to the big city is the classic american dream. That’s why when I was coordinating interiors the first designer I thought of was ralph Lauren. The label’s greatest contribution was textiles, specifically the graphic tattersall used on the walls, chaise longue, and curtains on the four-poster in the master bedroom. ralph Lauren was also the source of the geometric print on the walls, sofa, and cushions in the
‘Our design directive was clear: a classic new York residence layered with Youthful touches Of modernism’ DEREK BLASBERG
gossip room – which I loved because it felt like a stereotypically american version of a shisha bar – and the luxe green velvet on that curvaceous sofa in the living room.
I had an incredible art mentor: mega dealer Larry gagosian, whom I’ve worked with for five years. I asked my friend dan colen to create an installation of his stud paintings for the living room. Why studs? I thought the neighbourhood needed something a little punk and I loved how it looked like a giant wall of crushed-up disco balls. I sleep under a small Fernand Léger painting while my favourite fashion picture of all time, richard avedon’s
Dovima with Elephants, is hung by the front door so I can admire it whenever I’m coming or going. Much to my boyfriend’s chagrin, his mother added to my embroidered-pillow collection when she gave me a pouffe for the gossip room that reads: ‘If you can’t say something nice about someone come sit by me.’
The housewarming took place on my 36th birthday and it turned out to be the perfect christening for a home to host my next 18 years. one friend spilt red wine on the white carpet. another knocked over a keg of beer, which leaked all over the kitchen floor. People were smoking everywhere. surprisingly, I was fine with every bit of it. after all, I had dreamed up this apartment (literally), and the stains made me realise I was actually living in it.