“History is contemporary! Place that on a T-shirt!”
Michael Tomei was beaming when he logged on for our interview from his apartment in New York City. His genius for infusing modern day interiors with furnishings with loaded patina is obvious in his meticulously-made, 2,100-sq.-foot, two-bedroom loft that he shares with his partner, Peter, and a rescue pet named Huxley.
Gut renovating the room in a century-previous warehouse developing in Manhattan’s NoHo district signaled a important equipment-shift for Tomei, who utilized to conceptualize shop displays and trend exhibits for brands like Calvin Klein, Balenciaga, and Lanvin. Opening Michael Vincent Style in 2019 permitted him to devote his electrical power to rescuing old properties and time-worn furnishings, and—not to mention—binge-view BBC interval films for inspiration. “If they have a powdered experience and a wig on, or if the adult males are prettier than females, I’m in,” he jokes.
Considerate touches warm up the loft’s minimalist kitchen. Among the them is a environmentally friendly slab of Indian marble, a stone vessel sourced from antiquarian dealer Michael Trapp, and the spectacular vessel on the counter by the German artist Roger Herman.
Tomei’s obsession for curiosities from a bygone era is tempered with an attentiveness to contemporary concerns—including how to tastefully insert more closet house. Each nook in the loft displays his intuitive aptitude for seamless juxtapositions in between outdated and new objects: In the dining place, a heirloom mahogany table from the 1920s is flanked by Harry Bertoia’s wire chairs. His grandmother’s chinoiserie cupboard shares the very same place as a Jean Prouvé lamp and a pair of handsome bean-shaped sofas from Studio Walrus. One particular exception is the 1990s minimalist reverie in the major rest room. “It’s my John Pawson moment,” Tomei claims. “It reminds me of the Calvin Klein store he designed on Madison Avenue in the nineties.”
Having a blank canvas to function with was releasing, Tomei claims. “Moving from a conservative co-op building into this loft was a breath of clean air in terms of allowing and limitation system,” he claims. “In my previous co-op it took eight months just to get the allow to start off my building. In this new condominium I shut on a Friday and started demolition on Saturday!”
Obtain now for unlimited obtain and all of the added benefits that only customers get to working experience.
Operating on the condominium also fixed Tomei of the itch to continuously redecorate, as he did with just about every style cycle in his former vocation. “It’s sort of monumental for me,” he clarifies. “It’s the initial place that I have developed for myself that I’m entirely articles with.” His residence doubles as a studio and dwelling showroom for potential shoppers to experience his style sensibility in the flesh.
The working experience of coming up with an total area emboldened Tomei to acquire on rescuing unloved households in Very long Island. He devoted a lot of the pandemic yr to renovating many qualities in Bellport, New York, together with an previous captain’s household from the 1870s, an 1840s cottage, and a midcentury ranch. “Compared to a new create, restoring a thing calls for a great deal additional care, effort and hard work and investigation, but I’m all about it,” he suggests.
