Hits all the Right Notes

Brittany Marom transforms a music lover’s Manhattan loft into a showstopper.

When a client of Brittany Marom commissioned her to furnish the two-thousand-square-foot loft he had just bought, she couldn’t stop thinking about  the tin ceilings, solid wood columns and beams  that ran the length of the open-plan space.

“The architecture was incredible!” says Marom. “How did the builders even get those beams into place? They are massive. You see a lot of converted warehouses and factory spaces downtown, but you hardly ever find one that feels like a true loft, as this one did.” Thus, Marom decided that the original features which distinguished the loft would inform her design and not the other way around.

Change for the sake of change isn’t Marom’s style. Since founding her eponymous design firm seven years ago, she’s cultivated a following among those who appreciate her knack for knowledgeably mixing 20th-century classics and post-modern appointments with bespoke pieces. At their best, her interiors are hip and witty and glamorous; they also show an attentiveness to proportion and to the daily routines of the people who inhabit them. It is not too hard to design a room that is aesthetically pleasing; far harder to design a room that both looks good and feels good. The latter is bound up in intangibles — the skill with which the designer has handled light, the disposition of objects, and the general feeling of well-being (or lack thereof) that we experience in a particular built environment.

Marom took all of the above into consideration when working on the loft’s redesign. As the kitchen and bathroom had been nicely finished with Carrara marble, satin nickel plumbing fixtures, and English fittings when the client purchased the loft, Marom focused on the open-plan living space.

As she worked with the client, an idea took shape which she describes as ‘elevated bachelor pad.’ (He has since married.) Also on the brief: the loft had to reflect its owner’s passion for rock music — he is a huge fan of the Grateful Dead — so Marom decided to kit out the main living area in what she describes as sixties-era ‘jam band style.’ 

One of her most inspired choices on that front are a pair of swivel chairs by Yabu Pushelberg. With their wide wing-like arms, they look as though they might take flight and seem tailor-made for playing the guitar. “They’re amazing,” Marom says. “For the shell, we chose a really soft yummy deep grey leather that has nice movement to it and we did the seat cushions in midnight-blue chenille.”

Other vintage trophies include the Brazilian designer Sergio Rodrigues’s iconic ‘Molleca’ chair. “I knew the client had to have one, but they cost a fortune. Even though he had a healthy budget, a chair like that could have broken it,” says Marom, who ultimately spotted one on Chairish, the online vintage furniture shop, at ‘a decent price.’ She says, “At first I was a little hesitant. I was like, Is this real? But then the seller provided me with paperwork from an auction house I frequent.”

She offset those show-stoppers with a live-edge walnut coffee table of her own design. At a time of unprecedented disruptions in supply chains, Marom says she has become ever more devoted to custom and vintage pieces and antiques — a move that seems a natural evolution of her style. In this regard, the highlight of the lounge space is an early 19th-century rug from Turkey. With its rich blue, gold, and red patterned hues, it anchors the space and reflects the forms and colors in the room. As Marom tells it, she knew as soon as she set eyes on the rug (at ABC Home) that it would unify all the other elements in the space. Without a second to waste, she took the client to see it. “Basically,” she recalls with a laugh, “I told him he had to buy it.”