This NYC Pad Is the Complete Opposite of a Blank Canvas
Picture an apartment on Manhattan’s Museum Mile and an image comes to mind: a classic six in a prewar co-op, filled with antiques, plump furniture, and blue-chip art. But when Sara Tayeb-Khalifa arrives at her home near Fifth Avenue, she enters an environment unlike her neighbors’—or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Her living room’s espresso hue acts as a foil to an explosion of color—from the Vladimir Kagan sofa in an electric-blue velvet to colorblocked silk draperies in six jewel tones, from cobalt to yellow to fuchsia. The kitchen’s ceiling and walls are covered in a pattern of ripe oranges, her bedroom is done up like a fantasy garden, and art is everywhere, as are intriguing objects and scores of books that spill off surfaces.
If the apartment resembles anything, it is Tayeb-Khalifa herself—the rooms are as vivacious as her outfits, sparkling with humor and curiosity. “I’m a hummer, and whenever I come home I hum that Elvis Presley song ‘Welcome to My World,’” she says. “Do you know the lyrics? ‘Welcome to my world / Won’t you come on in? / Miracles, I guess / Still happen now and then.’ It’s a very bright, very happy home. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted for myself.”
Tayeb-Khalifa was born in Lebanon and raised in London, where she met her husband, the financier Hussein Khalifa. It was the New York–based designer Patrick Mele who guided the couple on their journey to a more colorful lifestyle. Though based for many years in London, they had purchased the New York apartment in 2006 to serve as a second home. Architect Nasser Nakib helped to modernize the space, which Tayeb-Khalifa decorated in an elegant but muted style. But the more time she spent in New York, the more she found her style evolving. “There’s a richness here everywhere you turn,” she says.
She is a strong believer in having a room of her own, so she and her husband each have their own bedroom. “We have a very happy marriage,” she says, “but I like to read my iPad in bed, and we both get up a lot, so it’s a wonderful compromise.” Wanting to make her husband’s room as comfortable as possible, she asked Mele to decorate it. His scheme, which paired sea-blue walls with an orange ceiling and a David Hicks geometric carpet, was such a hit that Mele was invited to London to rejuvenate their home there. That apartment, with its raspberry brocade walls and Iznik-tiled kitchen, was a game changer. “Patrick is a big fan of color, and as a result I started taking more chances,” she says.
The couple were in New York when the pandemic began in 2020 and found themselves marooned in a neutral space—Hussein’s bedroom aside—that was as subdued as its London counterpart was dynamic. “There was no color,” Mele notes, “apart from the art.”
The transformation of the apartment happened gradually. Tayeb-Khalifa, a former executive at Phillips, can often be found wearing the vibrant patterns of the Nigerian-born fashion designer Duro Olowu and noticed he had a new line of home textiles out for Soane Britain. “We began reupholstering her pieces,” says Mele, a former window and set dresser for Ralph Lauren and Kate Spade. Armchairs were re-covered in leopard velvet, collectible furniture was added to the mix, and their art—which includes works by Marie Laurencin, Sally Mann, and the Turkish artist Selma Gürbüz—was strategically rehung. “I’m especially drawn to work by women artists,” Tayeb-Khalifa says. “They’ve been so overlooked.”
Last year the Khalifas moved out for a week; in that short time, their contractor wallpapered the hall and kitchen and, in a late-breaking decision, painted the living room that deep brown. “It made everything pop,” she says. The result is so uplifting that she feels vindicated in her choice to make Manhattan her primary residence. “New York changed me,” she says. “It made me bolder. I’m staying. Welcome to my world.”
Styled by Frances Bailey
This story originally appeared in the March 2023 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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