Eric Thayer/The Globe and Mail
As president and chief designer of Pink Tartan, the women'swear brand she founded 13 years ago, Toronto-based Kim Newport-Mimran travels frequently to New York, where, since 2004, she has maintained her U.S. showroom in art-suffused Chelsea; it is close to where her husband, Joe Mimran of Joe Fresh fame, also has an office. The East End Avenue maisonette that the couple purchased seven years later in a grand old building that originally served as a city hospital serves as a second home for both of them. It is close to the East River, and has views of a nearby park from the large windows of the living room. When she was decorating it, Newport- Mimran, a working mother who also oversees a brace of Pink Tartan stores in addition to an e-commerce site, approached it as she would one of her collections (the latest of which, for fall/winter 2015, will be unveiled during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Toronto next month), layering it with mix-and-match pieces ranging from soothing neutrals to jolts of vibrant colour in order to make it feel modern, fresh, lived in. "Decorating is a design exercise for me," she says. "Joe and I rotate art, and when we find something we like, we add it to the house. It's always looking forward at what's new."
The couch
"This is from Holly Hunt, a beautiful showroom in New York, and it was made for us. We chose the upholstery colour. It's very comfortable and it's [emblematic of] why I love this room: Everywhere you sit is a comfortable place."
The orange painting
"This is by George Condo, an American artist who goes to the major galleries to look and study the master works, eventually doing this really interesting play on them. This one evokes a clown. It's artificial realism, and I love it."
The armchair
"It's a Pedro Friedeberg chair, and it's from the 1970s. I just love the shape of it, carved with shapes of hands. It has a cute sense of humour and is almost like a piece of art. But it's really comfortable to sit in as well. We found it in New York, at one of the little venues in Chelsea, where there are so many wonderful furniture stores. We visited many of them when decorating the apartment."
The large painting
"That's by Jonathan Meese, a German painter Joe and I collect. We love modern art, and he is one of the artists we have works by. We bought it at Art Basel and we when we saw it we knew we had the perfect wall for such a large painting. I love the power of it. There is strength in the bush strokes and all the graffiti going on. It's very New York to me, with its rich reds and blacks."
The coffee table
"That's another beautiful antique, also found in New York in one of the city's great furniture spaces. It is made of Lucite and has metal legs. I love how modern it is. There's so much dark wood panelling in the [rest of the] apartment and I thought clear was the best choice in that room. It's not competing with anything."
The stool
"This is by Marc Bankowsky. We have a couple of them in the apartment. They are very comfortable to sit on, but, with the hooves, they've got a sense of humour about them. I love that. Style should have a bit of whimsy."
The desk
"It's a Jacques Adnet desk from France and it has a beautiful, aged leather top with the most beautiful patina. The colour is one you get only from leather when it ages. It's from the 1950s. I use it when I do research, flipping through picture books. Joe and I got it on 1sdibs, which is one of our favourite shopping sites, I have to say."