Inside the $20,000-a-month penthouse used only for Instagram photo shoots
THIS stunning — and eye-wateringly expensive — apartment looks like it was pulled out of Vogue Living, but no one lives in it. Here’s why.
Interiors
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THIS 220sq m penthouse apartment in New York City’s trendy Soho costs $20,000 a month to rent — but nobody lives here.
It’s a beautiful studio designed especially for Instagram influencers who need unique, stylish spaces to serve as the backdrop for their photo shoots.
The apartment opened last month by Village Marketing, an agency that connects brands with social media influencers. They facilitate many of the sponsored content and product ads you see on your Instagram feed.
But while taking pretty photos and uploading them to Instagram sounds easy, some influencers claim finding a cute backdrop for a photo shoot is surprisingly difficult.
Village Marketing founder Vickie Segar said many influencers were booking hotel rooms or sneaking into fancy interior design stores to snap stylish pictures for their accounts.
“People get up and go to (popular American homewares store) ABC Home the second the doors open to shoot — they do anything,” Ms Segar told The New York Times.
“Spaces like this are gold for them, because then they’re able to have a place that’s a home to shoot lifestyle home moments in. People literally travel to this space to shoot. It felt like this was the exact perfect place we should have on here,” Ms Segar said.
The studio looks stunning in photos. It’s all millennial pink, gold details and clean white surfaces.
“Most of our influencers are millennials, most of them love this colour palette — the gold accents, the blushes, the velvets, the furs,” Ms Segar said.
The different spaces serve different needs. For example, there’s a luxurious bathroom with a tub and a large mirror for beauty influencers to shoot makeup tutorials.
There’s a large bed, a spotless kitchen and a fun outdoor rooftop entertaining area with views of the New York skyline.
“When you think of all the products they’re trying to bring to life, they need as many moments and feelings as possible,” Ms Segar said.
“We needed a really white, well-lit kitchen that had enough space that you could back out and put a camera to video and film,” she said.
Marianna Hewitt is an American beauty influencer — she has 828,000 Instagram followers, her own beauty YouTube channel and recently launched a face mask called Summer Fridays.
She uses the studio apartment to create natural-looking, beautiful photos for her Instagram page.
“If you shoot in a traditional photography studio, it almost looks too good for social,” Ms Hewitt told the Times. “We don’t want to shoot at our house every single day or the same streets we post on all the time.”
While needing a $20,000 apartment to “work” in might seem ridiculous to the average office worker or tradie, influencers say a beautiful space like this is crucial.
New York fitness influencer Hannah Bronfman, who has 474,000 Instagram followers, summed it up like this: “Listen, does Instagram create false reality? Yes, 1000 per cent. But having a place like this, for me, is not about pretending your life looks like something else. It’s about having a space you need to get your work done.”
Originally published as Inside the $20,000-a-month penthouse used only for Instagram photo shoots