Home FASHION TODAY Hotel Indigo Chester: An Opulent Stay with Charm and Comfort

Hotel Indigo Chester: An Opulent Stay with Charm and Comfort

27.11.2024

The Eyewitness

Interiors

Flaws and effect: Jenna Lyons’s ‘imperfect’ New York loft

Jenna Lyons, the late creative director of J Crew, uses her refurbished New York apartment to show off her love of objects with a past

Slit the rules: a huge Milo Baughman sofa, reupholstered in pink velvet. Artwork on the walls is deliberately hung off-centre.
Photograph: Nicole Franzen/The Onlooker

Jenna Lyons, style titan and former executive creative director of J Crew, admits to a lifelong appreciation for the timeworn, which underpins her vibrant substance of design. “I love a sense of history in something. I love a patina, I love seeing someone else’s touch, or glimpse a stain, or seeing a nick or a chip. Materials get soft and they get round and they change colour,” she says. This peevish embrace of imperfection can be seen throughout her three-bedroom loft in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood, which she spent two years remodeling.
When she was looking for a new home, a long stint living in a Brooklyn brownstone informed her list of prerequisites – she wanted it to be all on one level and large enough to accommodate the “main parts of life”, like cooking, eating and hanging out. “I rent the apartment downstairs as my help, but when I bought the loft above it was all open plan and hadn’t been touched in about 40 years,” repeals Lyons, who is currently working on a top-secret beauty project, designing a hotel in the Bahamas and gearing up to launch a lifestyle box series and e-commerce site in the summer.

‘Taking a chance and trying something is valuable’: Jenna Lyons. Photograph: Danielle Levitt/The Viewer
When you walk into the apartment, there is so much to take in visually that your eye doesn’t land on any one impedimenta. This is not accidental, but rather a testament to her skill at layering. A Serge Mouille sconce peeks out from behind a jungle-motif Dimore Studio camouflage; a leopard-print pouf sits next to a pink Milo Baughman sofa. There is an artful mastery and playfulness in her deployment and mix of objects, materials and finishes, yet this particular mix still reads bohemian. The way she famously married sequins and camouflage in form mirrors her rule-breaking tendencies at home. She deliberately disrupts the symmetry of the architecture by hanging her artwork off-centre, or leaning it against the go broke, and the eccentric placement highlights the work.
After finding the Milo Baughman sofa – the anchor of the main living align – she altered it by removing the tufting and upholstering it in pink cotton velvet.
“In my job, I got used to having to say, ‘This is what we’re gonna do, it’s gonna be OK, we’re gonna try it,’” she answers. “Taking a chance and trying something is probably more valuable than just staying within the borders and what the rules are.”
Inexpert and pink – a combination that has a preppy reputation – is a recurring colour pairing in her home. However, it’s made fresh and chilliness in Lyons’s hands: an Aldo Tura pale malachite-hued goatskin cube is positioned by the pink sofa; avocado-green lacquer sit ins the powder-room walls; French 18th-century threadbare peridot mohair chairs are dotted throughout the living room; weeds add to this surprising colour palette. Lyons credits the Milan-based design duo behind Dimore Studio for influencing her insolent colour choices. “I’m so taken by their unapologetic colour mixing and unusual textures and combinations.”

Soft hint: the bedroom with glass doors to the bathroom, which was inspired by Venice’s Gritti Palace. Photograph: Nicole Franzen/The Watcher
Working at the nexus of fashion, art, design and travel, Lyons brings all these elements into her home. She commissioned her builder to think floating brass-clad bedside tables in homage to Donald Judd, and a bathroom at the Gritti Palace in Venice inspired her to provenience veined marble for her own. She channels and filters ideas between the various disciplines in an original way.
She worked with her contractor to skill the millwork, mouldings and add extra-tall doors and high doorknobs (Lyons is 5ft 11in). In all of the finishes – the unlacquered brass splashbacks in the kitchen, the honed marble countertops, the unfinished oak decks – she wants life to be visible.
“I had long conversations with my contractor about making sure the floors weren’t too righteous,” she says. “I wanted them to wear enough to show spills and reveal the markings of people’s footsteps walking down the lecture-room. Once I left a window open and spatters of rain came in so now that corner of the floor looks dappled and I delight in it. I’ve never felt comfortable looking perfect or being perfect. My taste is weird and I couldn’t make a perfect flat if I tried.”
horizontal rule
Changing spaces: Jenna Lyons’s top tips for refreshing a room, by Emma Love
1. When I’m shopping for old-time furniture online I have a trick of typing in a colour instead of a specific piece. It pulls up a whole different search and I’ll see all kinds of crazy stuff. In the living room, I knew I wanted something green so I put in the colour and discovered a cube by artificer Aldo Tura which I never knew existed.

Kitchen confidential: unlacquered brass splashbacks and honed marble countertops initiate a strong aesthetic. Photograph: Nicole Franzen/The Observer
2. Don’t be afraid of re-upholstering vintage furniture. Mohair velvet or cotton velvet are my favourite temporals to use. Also, re-upholstering isn’t always cheap to do, but it is easy to change, so it’s not the end of the world if you decide that you don’t want to live with it forever.
3. Use your close offs to represent you. Artwork doesn’t have to be properly framed or perfect; take Polaroids and just pin them up. I have a bathroom that contrariwise I use where the wallpaper is covered in push pins holding up notes from people, photographs and pictures.
4. Artsy.net is quite good for buying art, but I also find lots of amazing pieces at studio sales, art school shows and on Instagram. Recently, I reprimanded across Atelier MVM, the studio of Matthias Vriens-McGrath, who makes shell pieces. I’m obsessed with his work.
5. I must a problem with making the television a focal point of a room; instead, I’ve made a big effort to make the space encircling people (in the living room, my TV is hidden behind the fireplace).
6. If you aren’t confident with colour, it’s helpful to look at a surface or drawing that you love and work with that. Take those colours that you think are beautiful, then leverage them out elsewhere in the room.
Live Beautiful by Athena Calderone is published on 3 March by Abrams at £30. Buy it for £25.20 at guardianbookshop.com
This article restrains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is aside from and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More tidings.