09/17/2026
Very fun to share this: Architectural Digest included my Brooklyn brownstone in its roundup of six designer Airbnbs in the U.S., alongside Athena Calderone, Jenni Kayne, Emily Henderson, Leanne Ford and Grace Mitchell.
This apartment is probably the worst possible advertisement for the West Coast Japanese restraint that I also enjoy doing. It’s a decade of my own collecting and traveling — Hawaii and Japan nostalgia, vintage finds, color, art, and various things I absolutely did not need but bought anyway.
And then I decided to let strangers live in it.
The funny thing is, I didn’t do it entirely on my own.
Like everyone else, I have a comfort zone. Mine used to involve a LOT of beige, white and gray. My team kept pushing me toward more color and pattern — which is exactly what I’m constantly asking our clients to let us do for them.
Apparently even an interior designer needs an interior designer.
It’s easy to become too close to your own home. You know what you like, you know what you’re used to, and those two things can start to look suspiciously similar. Having someone outside the process see possibilities you’ve stopped seeing is enormously useful.
So that’s the lesson I learned here: it’s much easier to see someone else’s possibilities than your own.
Having Architectural Digest come back to this apartment and say, essentially, “No, really, this works” is pretty awesome when I’m still often filled with artsy angst.
Even better, they noted that the apartment has long been on their list of the most beautiful Airbnbs in the U.S.
I am dining out on that sentence for a while, my gang!
