Page 83 - Architectural Digest - USA (March 2020)

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ABOVE AN ISAMU NOGUCHI FLOOR LAMP STANDS IN FRONT OF
A PAINTING BY RADHIKA KHIMJI IN THE LIBRARY. C. 1920 VASES
ON TABLE. LEFT IN THE MASTER BEDROOM, SARA TAYEB-KHALIFA
LOUNGES IN A 1960s WICKER CHAIR. ART BY BILLY CHILDISH;
1965 E.R. NELE FOR TEMDE FLOOR LAMP.

ondon’s Cheyne Walk presents bedroom in their Manhattan apartment, they offered to
a sedate streetscape that bears no send him back across the pond to revamp the Cheyne Walk
witness, save some blue English flat they had owned since the early 1990s.
Heritage plaques embedded in “I had done it room by room by room, but nothing
various façades, to its daredevil matched—plus, I no longer wanted safe,” explains the elegant
history. To the redbrick Georgian Tayeb-Khalifa, a former Phillips executive who is partner-
and Queen Anne houses and ing with sustainable-fashion designer Jussara Lee on collec-
apartment buildings that line this tions of T-shirts and cushions. “I wanted to make it happy:
Thames-side street in Chelsea, happy colors, happy home.” To that end, her discussions with
all manner of creative iconoclasts Mele were peppered with references to Auntie Mame, Miss
since the third quarter of the Havisham, and the ceilings of old French bistros, stained “a
19th century have gravitated. Querulous painter James Abbott color that reminds you of cigarettes, wine, bad alcohol, and
McNeill Whistler bunked here, as did dandified tastemaker more cigarettes,” Tayeb-Khalifa says with a laugh.
Christopher Gibbs, actor Laurence Olivier, and a few of the The couple’s backgrounds proved to be a stylistic spring-
Rolling Stones, plus Marianne Faithfull. board, too: She’s an Iraqi-Syrian born in Beirut and raised in
“All of Chelsea is a fairy tale for me,” says Patrick Mele, London, while he’s a native Egyptian financier who speaks
a young decorator who is based in New York City but looks seven languages (Malay among them) and is becoming adept
straight out of the Cheyne Walk playbook, with a tousled mop at Japanese sword fighting. Family aesthetics would be mined
of dark hair foaming above an angular face that’s pure Egon as well. Khalifa’s mother had been a client of two decorators
Schiele. “My best friend growing up was English, so I have of Middle Eastern origin, Alidad and John Stefanidis, both
always been drawn to that Anglo sensibility. And I used to come men known for their seraglio palettes. Add to that Mele’s own
here a decade ago, when I worked for Ralph Lauren, to work admiration for the succulent color schemes of the British
on the stores.” So, when Sara Tayeb-Khalifa and her husband, designers David Hicks and Geoffrey Bennison, and let the
Hussein Khalifa, high-fived Mele’s zesty decoration of a mash-up begin.

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