Sister Act

Recently I posted on a young designer's Manhattan apartment which I felt to be the perfect home for a stylish young woman. Well, the apartment has appeared again, this time in the current issue of Domino. The young woman is designer Nicole Hanley, and she lives in the same building (but different apartment) as her younger sister Merrill. Both women live in 800 square-foot apartments designed by Keith Irvine.

It is quite interesting to see the unique approaches the sisters took in designing their apartments (although there are more similarities than there are differences- after all, these are sisters). Nicole prefers a look of "frayed elegance" with a bit of edginess thrown in. She prefers more unusual color combinations like turquoise and brown. Merrill's apartment is more traditional and WASP-y with the Scalamandre "Shanghai" wallpaper in the entryway and a glossy red living room. Youthful touches in both apartments include lucite cube tables and chairs, Barcelona chairs, and modern artwork, but this is where the edginess ends. To me, both of these apartments possess the traditional look with which they were raised but are tailored to the lifestyle of young modern sisters.

And as the legendary Irving Berlin wrote in the song "Sisters":
Two diff'rent faces, but in tight places, we think and we act as one



Merrill's entryway with the "Shanghai" wallpaper.


Merrill's bedroom with a beige striped wallpaper, blue chintz curtains, timeless Leontine linens, and my favorite "Le Touches" print on the chair.


Nicole's bedroom looks a bit different from the article on which I previously posted. Like her sister, Nicole has Leontine Linens on her bed, but her nod to modernism is the lucite desk chair next to the bed.


Nicole's living room that is arranged off-center. The sofa fabric includes turquoise, orange, and yellow- all colors which Nicole favors.


In my opinion, Keith Irvine is a genius with the color red. Those glossy red walls look fantastic against the classic brown and white zebra print. Merrill's living room is also symmetrically arranged and is "tighter" than the living room of her sister.

Image at top: Nicole in her entryway paper with Brunschwig & Fils' "Gallaudet Diamond"

(All images courtesy of Domino magazine, Oct. 07, photographed by Paul Costello)