Matching kitchen appliances to vintage store thrift: Inside Helena Christensen’s Manhattan apartment
Helena Christensen’s “beautifully faded” New York City apartment has maximalist touches in every room.
By Hannah Marriott
Helena Christensen in her New York bedroom. One of her design philosophies is to “use every corner”, so there is always somewhere to sit and read. Credit: William Abranowicz
It’s a cold, bleak winter’s day in Manhattan. The trees are bare, the sky is white and – even in the West Village, one of New York’s most charming neighbourhoods – the footpath is thick with grumpy, grey-faced people slouching about in black padded jackets.
On a day such as this, stepping into the Danish-Peruvian supermodel and photographer Helena Christensen’s apartment is an absolute vibe. The space is both cosy (dare I say, hygge?) and intellectually invigorating, combining warm orange light from dozens of small lamps, myriad soft seating options, jazz on the stereo (the 56-year-old is a devotee of New York radio station WKCR-FM), and artworks – paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs – pinned, taped and displayed on every conceivable surface.
Christensen herself adds to the aesthetic fabulousness, of course. Greeting me barefoot, she wears a silk dress and red lipstick that enhance her bronzed skin, sharp cheekbones and startlingly bright, jewel-like green eyes.
Her home, she tells me, feels like “a little exhibition, where I have been given the honour of taking care of work created in the past”. She admits she is drawn to “curious, strange objects”. All around are dried hydrangeas spilling out of iron pots, seashells and quirky ceramics.
Her artworks include a spooky 1930s image of a Peruvian wedding party by Martin Chambi, a mournful image called Covered Car by Robert Frank (one of her “biggest inspirations” as a photographer), and countless paintings and drawings, most sourced from vintage markets.
Christensen often chooses kitchen accessories to match the red Smeg dishwasher.Credit: William Abranowicz
Some items have personal meaning, like the lifebuoy acquired from the set of the movie Cape Fear. It was given to her by Rocco Laspata and Charles DeCaro, whose agency spearheaded some of the most famous advertising campaigns of the 1990s. The piano was bought from Q-Tip of the New York hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. (The pair are friends and he happened to have one available when she was looking.) The general feel, she says, is “beautifully faded”.
If I looked like Christensen, I’d be tempted to paper my walls with photographs of my own face, but there are only a few photographs that nod to her status as one of the world’s most successful models. The most notable is an iconic 1991 shot of Christensen with models including Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell on an industrial street in Brooklyn.
“I’ve been travelling my whole life. I’ve visited local craftsmen - I have that mentality, a collector.”
Helena Christensen
This image, given to her by Peter Lindbergh, the man who shot it, was part of the creation myth of the “supermodel” – the band of long-limbed glamazons at the forefront of ’90s visual culture. It is nestled on a gallery wall along with other photographs she loves, including black-and-white Polaroids she took of her son, Mingus, now 25, as a young child. Nearby is a coat stand she uses exclusively for handbags, many of which are vintage Chanel 2.55s.
Christensen puts her eclectic taste down to the fact that, whether visiting family in Peru or flying to Thailand and Spain with her mother, who worked for Scandinavian Airlines, she has travelled a lot. “I’ve been travelling my whole life,” she says. “I’ve visited local craftsmen - I have that mentality, a collector.”
Her keen eye will come in useful for her latest venture, a new role at BoConcept, a Danish interiors company for which she has been appointed global artistic director. Christensen says she is delighted with the role, which will involve designing pieces as well as featuring in and producing campaigns that celebrate Danish design.
Growing up, she wasn’t aware that Danish home design was so well regarded and celebrated for its chic cosiness as well as its central role in mid-century modernism. She understands why, however, noting that “in the winter months, the concept of hibernating is just a fact of life”. (In Denmark, she says, they don’t use the word “hygge” much; rather, “hyggelig” is said “a hundred times a day”. If you visit a cosy apartment, or ask a friend for dinner, or enjoy a picnic in the forest, “anything like that is hyggelig”.)
Christensen says her apartment feels “like a museum – absolutely every piece has a story behind it”.Credit: William Abranowicz
The part of her apartment that best reflects Danish culture, she thinks, is her kitchen, with its preponderance of “ceramics and pottery – lots of teapots, lots of honey and jam”. Cosiness is also reflected in “a lot of candles, indoor plants, spaces you can throw yourself down with a book”. One of her design philosophies is to “use every corner”, so there is always somewhere to sit and read. In winter, one of her favourite things to do is curl up in front of one of the working fireplaces.
Christensen also has a retreat in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York and a “family beach cottage” in Denmark, but it is this New York apartment that feels most like home. Built in 1856, it was once a paper factory and, before Christensen moved in, the artist Jim Dine’s studio.
She oversaw a renovation, conceiving the floor plan herself and putting walls, a kitchen and a bathroom into a big, open space over the course of about six months. With one long central room and exposed brickwork in places, it feels airy and a little industrial. “I wanted to make sure you could see from one end of the apartment to the other,” she says. “It is amazing and so unusual to have a loftlike space in the West Village.”
The decor hasn’t changed much since she moved here in 2000, when Mingus (whose father is Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus) was a baby. When he was a toddler, she reveals, “every sharp corner had a tennis ball on it so he wouldn’t hit his little head!” Otherwise, “objects come in and some may go, but it has stayed more or less the same. I think my life has always been so hectic that it’s nice to have the stillness within the four walls.”
Christensen’s style is not easy to emulate – so much of it is about her personal taste, about hours spent in thrift and vintage stores and antique markets, particularly in France, Copenhagen, India, Brazil and New York. (Quite a few of her pieces – including a pair of ceramic figures, she excitedly tells me, by Portuguese folk artist Rosa Ramalho and her granddaughter Julia – were found in markets in upstate New York.)
Christensen found the leathertopped desk in O’Sullivan Antiques in Dublin.Credit: William Abranowicz
She does like to follow interior designers and interiors magazines on Instagram, though she says she’s too prone to internet “rabbit holes” to recommend any. Generally, she favours designers whose style is “quirky, not perfect – I’m not a minimalist!”
That said, there is some “method to the mess”, as she puts it. For example, while the main room of her apartment is a loftlike open-plan area, its floors – painted pale green in the kitchen and warm grey in the living area – define each area. She also uses colour on her walls in a harmonious way; all the shades are on the antique white-blue-green spectrum and all are Farrow & Ball (for example, “Yard Blue” in the living room and kitchen and “Belvedere Blue” in the bedroom). “I love old colours,” she says. “They work so well with all my old paintings.”
This creates a sense of tranquillity, a word she keeps returning to when talking about the apartment. Though the city sometimes makes its presence felt (“Whenever a truck goes by, all the frames go crooked!“), the apartment is peaceful, and particularly blissful in summer, when she can open all the windows and the back doors to the garden. Rather than sitting outside, she likes to perch in the living room next to the open doors, watching the rain pouring down during storms, or quietly bird-watching. “They are beautiful birds - blue jays and red cardinals”.
The apartment is close to the Hudson River, and Christensen loves its spectacular sunsets. In the afternoon “when I see pink clouds over the garden I rush to the river”. To her, sunsets signal the end of each day’s “little story”. Like the objects she collects: “Every day is unique and each sunset is its own.”
And, as a person who likes to cram in everything life has to offer, Helena Christensen does not want to miss it.
The Sunday Times Style Magazine/News Licensing
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