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A lot of people find themselves moving to Manhattan after college graduation, ready to chase their dreams in the big city. Stephanie Berger did the opposite. Born and raised in Midtown, she was itching for a change of scenery after high school. She found herself down in New Orleans for nearly a decade, followed by a handful of years in the woods of New Hampshire and Seattle before returning to The Big Easy in 2020. Then, last February, she made her way back to New York, which had gone (mostly) unchanged. “The proliferation of E-bikes really knocked off my socks,” she laughs. “But it’s New York. New York is New York is New York is New York.”
Berger was certainly no stranger to New York City apartments—after all, she’d grown up in a one-bedroom rental on 30th Street. “I knew I was going to have to make some trade-offs,” she admits. While touring a 700-square-foot, builder-grade space in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, she tried to forget about its lack of character and texted her interior designer friend, Alyssa Owens, who she’d met years ago during their Teach for America days in New Orleans. “Talk me into this white box,” Berger wrote.
Owens, knowing her friend was drained from weeks of apartment-hunting, landed on a half-glass-full response: “I told her the light was great and that we could make it sing,” recalls Owens. With the designer’s stamp of approval, Berger signed the lease—although not before triple-checking with her listing agent that she was absolutely sure Berger couldn’t paint the walls. The answer was still no. “We basically had to create a whole personality from scratch,” says Owens.
Barely two months after moving in, Berger would be chasing another dream: She was set to join the cast of Survivor season 48. In other words, decorating plans needed to be set in motion ASAP. “I didn’t tell Alyssa what I was doing; she thought I was going on a silent retreat in Bali,” Berger remembers. To make things even more complicated, Owens lives in Australia now, so they had to master the art of collaborating via Zoom and text.
Leading up to Berger’s departure, the duo secured most of the large furniture pieces, with a friend volunteering to apartment-slash-cat sit and help receive the deliveries. By the time Berger was set to be back stateside, though, most of the return windows would be expired. “It definitely lowered my threshold for needing to have an opinion about every single item,” she says.
Even after just a few nights of sleeping in the sand—Berger ended up being the first contestant voted out—it was nice to come home to a king-size bed from Lulu and Georgia. Fitting it was a matter of getting creative with the layout. The most obvious choice would have been to put the headboard against the side wall, but Owens and Berger decided to make the piece a focal point and put it directly in front of the windows instead.
The next step? Hide the fact that the windows are asymmetrical with wall-to-wall pink sheers. “The curtains transformed what could have been an awkward architectural moment into the apartment’s most striking focal point,” says the designer.
Despite the close quarters, Berger also wasn’t keen on a loveseat—she wanted to be able to stretch out on a three-seater. Owens tapped into her Aussie design rolodex and introduced her client to Ellison Studios’s Muse Sofa. Berger went to her local Design Within Reach showroom and did the ultimate sit test: a 45 minute phone call taken on the floor sample.
With painting out of the question, Owens relied on lighting to both set the mood and help divide the narrow floor plan. She swagged a pendant over a stone table, signaling a dining “room,” and installed a plug-in Le Corbusier sconce behind the sofa. But really, it’s the layers that make the temporary space feel more like home: a bust from local vintage shop Portmanteau, brass sunglass shelves by Hawkins, a large painting by Heather Bird Harris, a transparent Quiet Town shower curtain. Whenever Owens bought new, she chose rich materials, like velvet, marble, and wood. “Texture and patina can completely transform sterile spaces,” she says. Toward the end of the project, Berger treated herself to a glass vase by Sophie Lou Jacobsen—“the perfect little jewel in the crown,” the designer adds.
Original art is always a good idea to beat the builder-grade blues. Besides the Harris piece, an extra-large Amy Wright painting hangs over the sofa to help break up the vast white wall; pictures taken by Berger’s photographer mother live in her closet; and a Mary Ball painting, sourced directly from the artist’s studio, seems to float in front of the bedroom curtains (the handyman built a small wooden block behind the frame).
But nothing serves as creative fuel for Owens quite like having a client who turns herself into a work of art every year for Mardi Gras. Berger has been to every one since 2008 (with the exception of 2020) and one of the many crews she’s a part of, the Red Beans, requires making elaborate costumes out of—what else!—beans. “One year I made a jacket out of black, white, and pinto beans that was a recreation of The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” Berger recalls with a laugh. “Except I titled it Girl with the Bean Earring.”