Your Mama always thinks it's a hoot and a half to have a wee look-see at the always done, done, done day-core of any of the many residences owned or occupied by Oscar winning ack-tress Gwyneth Paltrow because, you know, beehawtcha really gets serious about letting it fly when it comes to working over the interiors of her inner sanctums.In between thumbing through the latest issue of the The New Yorker and kicking some Chow Lee ass on our iPhone Scrabble application yesterday, Your Mama received an unexpected but delicious dispatch from Iphuhgeenie Ipakacker who thoughtfully aimed Your Mama's admittedly limited attentions towards a blog called The Happy Home. The Happy Home gal, through a process of deduction and cross referencing, managed to ferret out a small photographic cache of good ol' Gynnie's downtown New York City penthouse pied a terre.
Gynnie's homes always look undeniably pretty, well conceived and finished, if a bit unnecessarily theatrical at times. However, iffin Your Mama is being honest–and we always are–they often look to our beady, untrained little eyes more like the sort of picture perfect palaces where a gussied up gal like Gynnie might have her photos snapped for a glossy celebrity promoting publication then they do actual homes.
The rigorously restrained, romantic, and sophisticated if somewhat sterile interiors of Gynnie's downtown New York digs where all done up and did over in a heavily textured and muted palette of pinky pastels, gleaming whites, and shimmering silvers by the former film set designing duo Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch whose New York City-based full service firm is, for some reason unknown to Your Mama, called Roman and Williams.
Gynnie and Chris's crib New York City aerie, located in the same building as the fabulously faux-humble and wickedly talented actress Meryl Streep, is hardly the only high profile project or home of a celebrity worked over by Roman and Williams. They are the design minds responsible for the renovation of the Royalton Hotel in New York, the quirky but faboo 211 Elizabeth Street residential building–also in New York–that's home to actor Gabriel Byrne (In Treatment) and budding singer Alexa Joel (Billy's daughter), the 4-floor Venice, CA home of Elisabeth "Lisa" Shue and her Oscar winning documentary film director husband Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), the sprawling Los Angeles compound owned by Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, and boho-glam/hippy-chic west coast abode of actress Kate Hudson.
According to their website, Roman and Williams completed the "total strip down to stud and redesign" of a TriBeCa penthouse for "an actress, her musician husband, and their children" in the winter of 2008. The 4,479 square foot aerie, which the peripatetic Paltrow-Martins purchased in March of 2007 for $5,146,538 according to the peeps at Property Shark, has 3 bedrooms, 3.5 poopers, a slim terrace off the master bedroom and a slightly less slim terrace accessed through the living/dining room as well as the super-sleek, eat in kitchen with it enviably chunky marble counter tops.
Listen chickens, it's all a bit precious, fussy, and far too self-consciously feminine for Your Mama's particular and delicate decorative tastes, and we find some of the bits and pieces a bit hokey and recherche–like that silly porch swing-thing in the living room fashioned from an antique Indian door–but in the end Your Mama doesn't question the genuine decorative talents of the Roman and Williams folks whose abilities should not be judged only on the crisp and cleaned lined but somewhat belabored lady-like interiors of Gynnie's penthouse outpost in downtown Manhattan because, on the other hand, the day-core of both Ben Stiller and Lisa Shue's Los Angeles homes are spectacular.
Can any of the children see the very laid back seeming Mister Martin padding around in his dirty socks in this not particularly casual penthouse? We can't either.
photo: Roman and Williams via The Happy Home
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