Inside Paloma Elsesser’s Timeless Brooklyn Home

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[Videographer] Okay.

I hear Bad Bunny.

Hello AD, it's Paloma Elsesser, welcome to my home.

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Welcome to my living room.

I grew up in a house

that every single room had multifunctions.

Sometimes my mom lived in the living room and me

and my siblings would live in the

bedroom or whatever it was.

So I was very excited for this space to be very intentional.

Brooklyn was always for me like the goal in many ways.

Firstly, I wanted a multifamily home.

I grew up in a multifamily home in Los Angeles.

Second was I also grew up in a historically black

neighborhood and I wanted to be surrounded

by the environment that I grew up around.

And third, I just didn't want to see people I worked

with every single day of the week, every single hour.

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I didn't actually ask anyone else to work on this house

with me besides Gregory Rockwell

and Hester Hatty,

who are iconic designers from Gregory Rockwell Interiors.

We started off centered around a lot

of Italian influence.

So there's some old, some new, some contemporary,

some different kind of multicultural layers.

But ultimately what I love about specifically Milano design

is that it's kind of this like kookiness

that some people might not like,

but it inserts such a profound joy while remaining really

elegant and timeless.

This little sofa is a little freaky thing.

It's kind of like this like Jetsony space age shape

that we really loved.

And then we wanted to cover it in this really elegant camel

moha, and I think it interacts perfectly

with highlighting this beautiful artwork

by my dear friend Eric Mack.

I think he does amazing,

almost like sculptural textile layering work.

I love that this work is named after his grandmother Mary.

I too am a big fan of my grandmother

and I think it brought a familial and warmth to this room.

So one of my favorite pieces in this room is this

light fixture.

It's literally called Low Luxury.

It's about a German designer named Ingo Mower.

It perfectly hangs under the original crown molding

of this house that was built in 1905.

And it's this beautiful, warm, layered kind of structure.

It felt like a really nice accent to its history,

but also how it exists today, by the way,

like I hate televisions

and I think that to offset that,

there's literally a television here.

I want to be surrounded by all these beautiful, fun,

amazing things like this tiny little dogan penis

and my particular favorite, an R creme Devil Girl look.

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And welcome to my kitchen.

I love this room.

It brings me so much joy.

So we're very inspired by Melanie's

and like historic Italian palazzos

that often have modern kitchens kind

of interjected into them, like

how do we like honor this like gorgeous molding,

but then put this shiny range.

My kind of vision of this space was like being able

to just kind of crowd around it.

Maybe someone could be dancing on it,

maybe there's like spilled sauce or whatever it is,

and that's happened few times.

Some say that green marble is a faux pa,

but what I think is a faux pa is stripping a house

of its history.

So I really did want to honor the history

of this room while providing it

with some beautiful modernity.

You know, this already existed.

Cool.

Let's put a pantry that's an aluminum lacquered space

with almost these weird Italian perforated vents.

Ultimately, what I also love most about this

room is the color.

It is this kind of citron yellowy green

that truly brings so much levity

and quiet despite somebody being like, wow,

this is a crazy color.

I find it quite muted.

This felt like this like genius idea

that came into our heads when we were like sitting

around talking about perfectly tucking in these like

gorgeous walnut stools.

It literally hit something within my spirit

that I have a long since sought to feel again.

This is very special to me.

It is my great, great, great grandmother.

This picture is just so special.

Can you believe that these things still are around?

I think being surrounded by like the strength of like women

and the people and my ancestors that come before me

and the hair is just so beautiful and she's so beautiful

and there's a stoicism in her eyes

that I feel like reminds me the life that I get

to live today is because of all the things that she did,

and I need to be reminded of that gratitude people.

Let's go into my dining room.

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This is my wonderful dining room.

This is actually my favorite room in the house.

In the morning, light pours in here.

That straight up covers me with a sense of serenity

that I rarely feel.

I think the first thing that we got in here was

this beautiful table.

It is a vintage Horzat table.

I think the shape of this table speaks

to the shape of this room.

I often sit here and do like meetings

or talk to friends

and just like look out at the trees,

look out at my neighbors.

And I waited literally seven months

to get these Indian chic blinds.

But we were obsessed with having them.

There's just a conversation that's happening

between this like kind of zany light fixture with blinds,

with like the light pouring in.

And then we're looking to this beautiful artwork

by Taylor Simmons.

That adds the most perfect element in this room

because there's always conversation,

there's always things happening in this room,

but there is deep contemplation that happens for me, right?

Like literally right here.

Even though like I said, there's a lot of chat,

there's also a lot of thinking,

and this work speaks exactly to that.

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Okay, well this is my hallway

and then there's a little secret here In my little

Harry Potter moment.

We separated the floors of the house.

This actually used to be a stair set,

and I thought, of course we need a tiny bathroom.

This bathroom makes me like incredibly happy

because many people don't know that it exists.

You know, if you ever just need to quietly take a moment

or sleep like Harry Potter did.

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Okay, welcome to my bedroom.

One big theme that you're gonna notice is I am a big

wall to wall girly.

I lean into what some may consider a faux pa.

I say fa, yeah, I wanted this room

to feel fucking serene.

I also spent a lot of time in hotels

and everyone goes, your room's like a hotel.

And I was like, that's on purpose.

There's no television here.

There are no clothes in here.

It is just quiet.

I can't believe I'm letting you guys in here even.

This is my pride and joy, this beautiful rotan bed

that we found on auction.

Sometimes when the light kind of like pours in,

you can see all the gorgeous reflection on these

like swirls.

I call it really, really fab.

I think that sometimes people have these like living room

setups in their room and they're like fake.

Mine is not.

I sit on this sofa constantly talking to my mom

or my grandma or talking shit to my friends or my boyfriend.

I also love this table so much.

It's Roger Capone.

He is a French iconic designer.

All of these impressions are done with real foliage

and leaves, which brings me profound joy.

So now we're going to the crown jewel.

This is like quite literally where the magic happens for me.

But first I want to call it this beautiful sculpture from my

friend Alis Vernay.

She works in all these amazing metal castings.

It's like so beautiful

and stellar the way that she kind of calls on history

and speaks to the modern woman.

I very much so identify with the way that she sees the world

and sees femininity and how to like honor who are

and who we've been and who we're becoming.

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Now this is my beloved bathroom.

It makes my life heaven knowing that I get to shower

and brush my teeth and pop my pimples in a room

that looks like this Italian marble.

Obviously, I grew up in a house with one

and a half bathrooms

where there was definitely not a stool or a seat.

When I take a shower, I look and I sit on this bench

and I think that like I'm okay today

and I think that's really awesome.

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Some might say this is actually where the magic happens.

It is more where my absolute meltdowns happen.

This is my closet.

This is like my dream closet.

Like dude, I have like lights in here for my shoes.

This is my boyfriend's shoes.

But when we thought about this room, we really had

to create serenity enclosure and quiet.

I think that I needed there to be a moment of like reprieve

and breath.

Sometimes I just plop down on this beautiful wall

to wall carpeting

and think, why do I have so many fucking clothes?

But I still get to do it in a beautiful room.

So yeah, this is like my gorgeous dressing room.

There's another one, but we don't have to tell anybody.

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This is my media room,

which is absolutely insane

to say in my mind like a media room.

I don't even think I grew up with like a television.

This room is obviously anchored with this gorgeous

tiger sofa that we custom built

and upholstered with this gorgeous Schumacher tiger print.

I really do love chinoiserie and Chinese influence.

However many of the tables we were finding had like literal

war scenes.

So, we decided that we would just custom one

and this beautiful pond motif.

Also, this beautiful work is by Natalie Depostia.

She was like a seminal female figure in the Memphis Milano

movement, and I think she doesn't normally get the

credit she deserves.

It's very male dominated, this kooky, strange room

that again, is littered with all these fun strange things

that I've collected in the world.

These Toric beads that I brought in my carry-on

that everyone's like, oh, that's strange.

But I love them so much.

This is a gorgeous mask from Mali.

These are just like kind of some of the books.

But some days me

and my boyfriend just have like a relaxed,

like do nothing day is what we call it.

We kind of spread out the books, eat pizza, do whatever.

I know it sounds very like we just spread out books

and eat pizza, but it's actually what we do.

I'm not lying to you,

but what I like about this room is that it is worldly.

I think it really touches on all of my travels,

all the things that make me happy.

What I'm excited about is that it'll continue to grow.

I'll continue to put some new little prayer beads on my next

travel and it won't feel out of place.

So it'll just fit perfectly into this very worldly room.

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All right, AD it was a pleasure having you at PE's Playhouse

and now I must bid you farewell.

All right, love you, bye.

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