How a Christmastime Meet Cute Resulted in One Stylish New York Apartment
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“Think pink” was always Lindsay Stall Falconer’s motto. “I’ve always loved that color,” says the designer, who grew up in New Orleans and never saw a rosy hue—or a floral or botanical print—she didn’t pile on. But that was before she met her husband, Peter Falconer, a stylish Irishman and fashion retailer, and embarked on the design of their first home together—a rental apartment in a townhouse overlooking New York’s Washington Square Park. “He acts like he doesn’t have opinions, but he actually has very big opinions,” Lindsay says. “He has very good taste.”
They met in 2017 in a scene straight out of a Nancy Meyers movie. She had just left her first job in the events department at Vogue to work as an assistant to the designer Daniel Romualdez. Her mother was in town from New Orleans, and they met for a drink at a downtown restaurant, the Spotted Pig. Falconer was also there that night, having just moved to the city to open a store for the English menswear brand Thom Sweeney. It was right before Christmas, and he needed help decorating the shop’s windows. She mentioned her love of decorating (“I always go over the top with my Christmas tree”), and he hired her to dress the windows. “It was my first freelance project,” Lindsay says. “And yes, my mother approved.”
When they were ready to move in together in February 2021, they found an apartment in a historic Greenwich Village brownstone that reminded her of the architecture she had grown up with in New Orleans’s Garden district. “The fireplace, the crown molding—it felt very familiar from the get-go,” she says. The owner had recently renovated the space, which was freshly painted and came with a Venetian chandelier, antique grandfather clock, and large pier mirror.
The palette of cream and olive was a departure for the designer but proved the perfect backdrop to meld her taste with that of Falconer’s, whom she married in October 2021. She brought with her a trove of furniture and art she had been collecting for years. He contributed a large collection of coffee table books, vintage Japanese magazines, and a large painting that he scavenged off a New York sidewalk. “Our styles are very complementary,” Falconer says. “My taste is much more handsome, and she loves vibrant color, so I think we really balance each other.”
A pair of Austrian Art Deco chairs from Uptowner Antiques in New Orleans (a gift from her grandmother)—previously upholstered in pink—were recovered in a green Claremont cut velvet. “I placed everything we had in the apartment when we moved in and then found the right pieces to fill the gaps,” she says.
She also looked to her art collection to inspire the palette. She has a large collection of paintings by the late Mississippi artist Andrew Bucci. “My father thinks Bucci is the next Matisse,” says Lindsay. “Every birthday and Christmas since I was 13, he gave me a painting by Bucci. At first I wasn’t so enthused, but now I’m grateful to have this collection. I love the colors he used—greens, mustards, and oranges—and I definitely pulled from his paintings in the design of the apartment.”
To make the design of the rental feel more bespoke, Lindsay added touches like custom window shades in the bedroom. And while the overall esthetic was what she describes as “gender neutral”—a compromise she and her husband could live with—she didn’t completely suppress her fanciful side. On 1stDibs, she found a French Provincial dining table with carved flowers. “It was very subtle, so I thought I could get away with that,” she says. Meanwhile, the bedroom has a headboard in a soft pink fabric and a salmon chair from John Derian. “My husband,” she says, “turns out to be fungible.”
Styled by Benjamin Reynaert
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