All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
When I was first going to move here, I was sending pictures back and forth with Petra Collins—she’s a photographer and my friend. If you know her aesthetic, you can imagine the kind of pictures we were sending each other, which were of '70s shag rugs and crazy couches and basically a Polly Pocket house blownup to human size. When I actually got to New York, I was like, Oh, the space I was thinking of is not that. I thought, it will be Boogie Nights! but it ended up being about: What are things I love, what are the things I need, how can I make sure they take up as little space as possible? And the apartment I’m in now, which is a lot more generous in size, it's the definition of what I need and what I love.
When I was a teenager, I loved having stuff everywhere. I rotated out the posters on the wall, the shit that was littering my vanity and my desk, the clothes I featured more prominently. I loved having these little phases and being really thoughtful about how my style was changing. Now, creatively, all that energy goes into my actual work and less into my space—I can’t spend an hour putting together an outfit now. Instead of being like, "I'm going to keep a bunch of glitter and sequins and flower petals on the shelf," maybe I switch up the books I have out at the moment. Whatever different aesthetics or tastes I’ve cycled through have sort of melded together and been made more livable.
My record player and my whole stereo system are special to me. I have a friend who’s a major audiophile and helped me find the pieces for somewhere in between a normal turntable and his extremely elaborate 1970s recording-studio–level system. It sounds really beautiful; records sound totally different on it than out of my laptop speakers. And then I have a floral file cabinet that I got on Etsy that I think is from the '60s or '70s. It’s orange; the drawers have these flowers on them. When I was looking for a file cabinet, they were all kind of sleeker, and when I saw this one I was like, That’s a Tavi cabinet, that’s mine.
There’s a lot of artwork I have that I really cherish. That’s the other thing: Instead of a billion posters, it’s so nice to have a few things that are really special to me framed. I have a poster from the original production of Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim, and not just because I love the musical, but because the story behind it is meaningful to me. There’s a whole documentary about it that I really love. I was raised on Sondheim. After I saw the documentary, I was like, Whoa, I need to keep around a good reminder of what it was like to watch this.
I'm sure there are people with much better taste than me who could do cooler things with this space, but I just want to be surrounded by the things I love and not have anything too ugly. Don’t get anything just because it looks like what a lot of people have on their Pinterest boards. Try to surround yourself with things that will make your space feel like a home.
