Andrew Torrey transformed the entrance to his New York apartment into a teleportation device, transporting visitors to another place and time whenever they stop by. At least, that’s his intention.
Torrey, an interior designer, grew up on a farm in rural Kansas, six miles from the nearest neighbor, an environment he misses terribly and aims to recreate in his Sutton Place rental home.
“I like to be surrounded by things that I love,” Torrey said.
New York is nothing without its newcomers, and while the city embraces diverse traditions and cultures, many immigrants — including bona fide cowboys like Torrey — still feel out of place.
To stay connected, some interior designers use their expertise to evoke the places and people they grew up with, so you can experience the Asian influences of Hawaii, the Western steppes, Ukrainian artistry and European design without leaving the city.
Sutton Place Grasslands
When Mr. Torrey moved from West Chelsea to his 14-story rental apartment on Sutton Place, the space had never felt further away from the Kansas farm where he grew up.
His sleek one-bedroom home left no room for reminiscences of his childhood, when he kept American Quarter Horses, known for their sprinting abilities, but over time he transformed the place into a Wild West wonderland.
“I know I shouldn’t find joy in things, but it reminds me of how I felt as a kid at home, and it’s wonderful to have that feeling now,” said Torrey, 45, owner of the design firm Torrey.
A row of Lucchese Western boots stands in the entrance, and behind them is a half-sized bathroom with four-and-a-half-foot-long bull’s horns dangling above the mirror.
Above the bed in the en-suite bedroom are two paintings of her grandparents’ quarter horses standing in the Kansas prairie.
The daring lifestyle of the American cowboy is a motif throughout the apartment, with pieces from Kansas and elsewhere, including an antique, waist-high Marlboro light box that sits next to a chair from Paul Newman’s study, which Torrey purchased at Steer Galleries, an auction house in Hudson, N.Y. Torrey grew up watching Newman’s other cowboy movies, including “Chamber of Secrets” and “Hombre.”
On his walls hang a collection of paintings by artist Robert Loughlin, depicting men smoking cigarettes.
But the real highlight is the 6-foot-by-6-foot bookshelf in the living room, where, among artfully stacked art books and the “Old West” series from Time-Life Books, treasures from his travels are displayed.
“I have a real aversion to decorative ornamentation,” Mr. Torrey said, sitting in a chair made from antler that he brought from his best friend’s grandfather’s rustic New York study. “All of this means a lot to me.”
On the shelves are some sculptures that recall his grandparents’ sculpture collections, including a Benin bronze statue he bought on his first trip to Morocco. There are also fossils and minerals, and here and there, a real sheaf of wheat, his talisman.
Torrey said he spent $225,000 on the decor and that the theme throughout the apartment is connecting with the earth and nature.
“I value natural materials,” Torrey says. “My values and respect for things and people reflect the way I live my life.”
Supporting Ukraine from afar
When Artem Khropovinska and Julia Khropovinska moved from Ukraine to Brooklyn in 2018, they left behind many of the practical items of everyday life. Instead, the couple’s three suitcases were filled mostly with silverware, china, and photographs.
“We’re both really big on design and detail, so it was really important for us to bring something memorable,” says Mr. Klopovinski, 32, an interior designer and founder of the studio Arcite, who often works with his wife, Julia, 33, a photographer and interior stylist.
Among the items they’ve stored are ornate century-old silver spoons, some of which Kropobinski inherited from his great-grandmother. To preserve their patina, Kropobinski refuses to wash the spoons: “I don’t want to strip them of their memories,” he says.
Since moving into their one-bedroom brick rental home in Bay Ridge, the Klopovinskis have spent about $5,000 on significantly expanding their collection of Ukrainian decor, including some treasures, such as a ceramic bust of a Ukrainian woman wearing a headscarf, that they found at last year’s I Am U Are – Ukrainian Creators Fair on the Lower East Side.
Supporting small Ukrainian businesses is a small comfort to the Khropovinskiy family, who are unable to return to their home country during the war.
At night, Mrs. Kropovinska goes on her computer to find ceramics by Ukrainian makers Gorn, Quiet Form and Dasha Puchtsami, including table vases resembling poppy seeds, a common plant in her homeland. Images of Ms. Kropovinska’s native Crimea are scattered around the apartment in photographs and books.
On the refrigerator is a magnet of a mosaic made from debris from a destroyed building in the Saltyvka neighborhood of Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian city where the couple lived before moving to Brooklyn. Mr. Khropovinskiy ordered the magnet from Ukraine, where architects sold them to raise money to buy portable heaters for families who lost power during the wartime winters.
Mrs. Klopovinska dug out of the closet a set of handmade linen tablecloths and matching napkins from the 1930s that she had ordered from a company in western Ukraine.
“It’s a part of my home and I’m so happy to have something like this everywhere,” she said.
A taste of Milan
Jonathan Farzione can visit Little Italy any time, but when asked if the downtown Manhattan neighborhood reminds him of home, he just laughs: “It’s too touristy,” he says, adding that SoHo suits his style better.
Mr. Fargeon, 37, a landscape architect who runs Jonathan Fargeon Design, moved to New York from Milan in 2012 to attend horticulture school at the New York Botanical Garden, but work-visa issues and pandemic travel restrictions kept him from returning home for much longer than he planned.
“It was a very difficult experience,” he said of being stuck in the U.S. “My father was sick and I couldn’t go and see him.”
To assuage his homesickness, Mr. Farzion toured Italian design showrooms in SoHo, and the prewar home he rented in Washington Heights was filled with mementos of his Italian-Jewish heritage, including a hand-carved wooden mezuzah given to him by his father, who lived in Israel.
Mr. Falzion now visits Milan about once a year, staying with his mother, an avid art and antiques collector whose furniture includes a 16th-century console, he said.
With each visit, Mr. Fargeon returns with more works, including a collage by Italian artist Lucio Del Pezzo and a cartoon-style “Rattlesnake” print by Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky.
“My family has always had an eye for art and beautiful things,” he said, adding that he spent very little on the interior decorations because he brought back so many pieces from his family in Italy.
Around his apartment are many works by Italian artist Giuseppe Capogrossi, including foldout prints he found in his mother’s basement.
“Capogrossi represents home,” he says, “and when I go somewhere and see Capogrossi, it’s like I’m being hugged.”
Mr. Faruzion is particularly proud of his lamp collection. The tallest in the collection, the “Papilona” floor lamp, is another keepsake from the family apartment, designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa for Flos. And in the living room window, under a canopy of purple wood sorrel, is an “Attoro” glass table lamp by Orruce. Founded in 1945, Orruce is one of Italy’s oldest lighting designers.
“This is my favorite thing to do at night. What’s great is that it lights up all the way to the bottom,” he said of the little white lamp. “All the lights I have are like sculptures.”
Honolulu meets Bedford-Stuy
It took Jarrett Yoshida and a former partner about a decade to renovate the first floor of their 1930s Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse, wrapping up the project in 2015 at a cost of about $50,000, with all that remained from the original was a few white-painted doors.
In 2018, the couple listed their studio apartment on Airbnb and moved their belongings to the second floor. They were both selected as superhosts that first year. (They ended their relationship in 2023.)
Yoshida, 56, grew up in Honolulu and moved to New York in 2002.
“When we think of a home, we think of it as an extension of a family,” says Yoshida, owner of Jarrett Yoshida Interior Design.
Walking through the 800-square-foot studio feels like walking into a restoration showroom: Yoshida said most of the furniture was found and restored following methods he learned from his seniors.
“My grandparents grew up working in the sugarcane fields,” he says. “When you don’t have money, you’re forced to look at everything in terms of, ‘Can I have this forever?'”
Every piece custom made for the space was made with DIY creativity. In the kitchen, the glass backsplash is made from a blown-up photo of koi fish taken in Hawaii. To create it, the photo was printed on the back of glass and installed by a glass blower.
The dining area is hung with a tapa cloth, a gift from a high school friend and formerly belonging to the island’s Bishop Museum, suspended from the cornice molding by silk thread, a technique Yoshida learned while working at the Smithsonian Institution.
But the highlight is a Japanese folding screen imported by Yoshida, made around 1868 during the Meiji Restoration, a political revolution that saw Japan embrace Westernization.
It was around this time that Yoshida’s parents’ families left Japan for Hawaii.
When asked if he was worried that Airbnb guests would damage the priceless relic, Yoshida shrugged and said he planned to restore it anyway, a project he estimates will cost about $20,000.
“You don’t need to understand anything about art to see this and know it’s amazing,” he said of the $3,000 screen.
