Life in New York City sometimes feels like a never-ending scavenger hunt, where everything from the latest restaurant to a brilliant new friend is a great discovery and days are infused with a sense of both urgency and play. Celebrity real estate broker Michael Lorber thrives on this exuberant intensity. “He’s one of the most man-about-town people I know,” says interior designer Nick Olsen. “He’s out to dinner nearly every night, and seems to know everybody on the street.”
Surely home life would be an afterthought to such a cosmopolitan character. But Lorber is as passionate about how he lives as he is about the world beyond his front door. “I’m kind of a homebody,” he admits. “Serial homebody” might be a better moniker. He’s owned two apartments and three successive weekend houses in the past decade—“an occupational hazard,” he says—all designed by Olsen. He derives his sense of home from favorite things rather than the spaces in which they’re arranged. “He is sentimental about what he loves,” notes Olsen, who began his career as a protégé of renowned designer Miles Redd. “Whenever he moves, he wants to reuse his beautiful antiques and art, his custom upholstery, his carpets. We don’t start with a clean slate.”
For Olsen, such reshuffling turns a project like this Park Avenue apartment into a 3D puzzle. Among the client’s must-haves for the sixth-floor space was his growing collection of significant art, including two Basquiats, a Warhol, and a Lichtenstein. Olsen gave serious forethought to the placement of only a few of these pieces, however—the larger Basquiat is centered heroically between two living room windows, for example. For the rest, he waited until everything was finished. “I like to arrange art intuitively and in the moment,” he says, “so it feels a little random, not too precious or formal.”
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Another requisite was a generous Sultanabad rug. Lorber chose the apartment in part because its living room was the perfect size for the rug, which now shares the space with a third item from his list of essentials: scenic wallpaper. Featuring a classical Italian landscape in shades of bronzy-green, it transforms the space into a lush Arcadia in which an ebullient mix of furnishings comes to life. A pair of vintage Louis XV slipper chairs upholstered in an Art Deco–patterned silk sits across from a deep, low sofa in aubergine velvet. Above this hangs the larger Basquiat, with text announcing Rome Pays Off, “a wink and nudge” to the wallpaper’s Roman imagery, says Olsen. As with much of Lorber’s art, the painting’s irreverence brings an almost graffiti-like jolt of energy to an otherwise fairly traditional space.
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In recognition of the client’s favorite color, a constellation of blues unifies the apartment. “I only wear blue suits. I used to only have blue cars. It’s very strange,” says Lorber. Olsen created a harmony from shades that include a resonant teal in the dining room, splashes of ice and indigo upholstery in the living room, rich lapis for the library sofa, and deep navy-and-black grass cloth on the primary bedroom walls. To keep the blues from feeling staid, he introduced a “wonky” jumble of other colors: luminous apple greens, soft straw golds, cinnabar reds. And handsome browns bring serenity to the library, where the walls are clad in camel-colored wool felt trimmed at the edges “like those beautiful little boxes you get at boutiques,” says Olsen.
Olsen likes using such outlines to introduce “line and relief” to both rooms and furnishings. He designed faux paneling in the entry hall using strips of marbleized paper traced by ultrathin painted lines, “like French mats on an antique picture frame.” He added silver petite bullion fringe to the primary bedroom curtains, “because in this ultramasculine room, I like that kind of push and pull.” In the dining room, Olsen painted Directoire chairs white, then upholstered them in cognac leather to create a crisp, bright moment of articulation amid the “big blue-glazed envelope.” Says the designer, “Unless furniture is museum quality, I’m certainly not scared of painting it white to freshen it and make the upholstery pop.”
Indeed, I’m Not Scared could be Olsen’s motto. “I like gutsy furniture,” he says—citing the flamboyant Georgian console (also painted white) and the fab 1970s trompe l’oeil aluminum-skirted side table in the living room. Gutsy gestures too: He grouped the Warhol with unprovenanced art in the breakfast nook (“kind of a flex,” he admits) and created a similar small cluster with the Lichtenstein on a living room wall, because a giant salon-style installation would have concealed too much wallpaper.
Throughout are little nods to Lorber’s life out on the town. “When I eat out, I always want to sit in the banquette,” he says, so his diminutive kitchen has its very own. And even his dinner parties are a chance to celebrate the wonderful high-low spirit of the city. “On Sundays, I have friends over and we sit around my fancy dining room table set with great linens and fine china and silver and we eat take-out Chinese food.” A noble hot spot if ever there was, inviting the city’s richest gifts inside and giving rise to a fresh portal of discovery.
Featured in our September/October 2022 issue. Interior Design by Nick Olsen; Architecture by Lee Stahl; Photography by Thomas Loof; Styling by Lili Abir Regen; Written by Celia Barbour.
