Design Inspiration: Kate & Andy Spade’s New York Apartment
Last week, New York magazine profiled Kate and Andy Spade, the understated powerhouse couple behind the Kate Spade brand of handbags, accessories, and other cool lifestyle stuff (including some of the cutest invitations and notecards around). The Spades sold their stake in Kate Spade to Neiman Marcus in 2006, but they’ve kept busy since – Kate as a full-time mom to their daughter Bea and Andy with a variety of projects from filmmaking to curating a downtown Manhattan shop that falls under the J.Crew brand.
Our fascination with the Spades runs deep – we love their spunky American style. So we were especially excited to get a quick glimpse inside their apartment (at left). We instantly fell in love with the eclectic, preppy look of the place, so we set out to create our own four-step guide for injecting Kate and Andy’s style into interiors of our own.
The Spade’s apartment barely has a spare inch of wall space and while it doesn’t look as though there’s any particular rhyme or reason to the placement of the pictures, the overall affect isn’t messy. It’s more like a really great, nicely curated collection. With some planning (and lots of measuring) it’s not too hard to recreate the same look at home.
Start with a color that’s interesting, but not overpowering, like the Spade’s cornflower blue, or like the pink in the room at the left. Add art that covers a variety of genres – we love seeing traditional oil landscapes saddled up next to abstract expressionism – and mix up the frame width and style. Start your arrangement on the floor, where it’s easy to move around to play with the right organization. When you’re organizing, variety is the key. Keep the distances between paintings fairly uniform, but mix them up by size, shape, frame style, and content.
2. Embrace Vintage
Treasure-hunting is one of Andy Spade’s personal passions. He outfitted the J.Crew store with stuff he found here and there and at his home, little knicknacks add personality to the overall decor. Whether you find your treasures on exotic jaunts or while digging through downtown flea markets, incorporating vintage finds into your decor is a quick way to add tons of personality into a space. In the room below, we love the cluster of goodies that sit on top of the dresser:
3. Showcase Your Library
There’s a lot going on in Kate and Andy’s apartment, but our eyes immediately go to that great bookcase in the back. We love books, which means we love how they look as a design element (it’s practical, too – when you love books, you have to store them someplace!). A great bookshelf is a must-have, in our opinion. What you fill it with says as much about your personality as those vintage knicknacks you pick up on your travels. In fact, books and interesting pieces pieces of art make for a fantastic combination (like in the room at the right).
4. Stripes
Finally, what’s a preppy interior without a few stripes? In the Spade’s apartment, they’re wide and clear, on side chairs, offering some clean balance that keeps the rest of the space from feeling overly cluttered. We like strips on chairs – you can move them around to change the overall feel of the room (and chairs are easy enough to recover if you want a change). We also like the way the Spades’ stripes fit neatly into the color scheme of the room. We love this dining room version of the look:
Subtle and sophisticated and a great expression of clean design.
Of course, the Spades apartment is just one example of preppy style. How do you preppify your home?
[Photo credits: Spade apartment from New York magazine. All other interiors from Houzz.com.]
When she’s not mopping up juice spills, Kit throws way-too-big parties, cooks complicated dinner, and decorates (and redecorates) her house. Plus, she writes about all of it – both the fabulous and the disastrous – for Examiner.com, Baltimore Magazine, Houzz.com and on her personal blog, Mango & Ginger.
