EGN NEWS DESK
What makes a home a house?
On Tuesday evening, that query floated within the delicately candle-scented air of a three-story penthouse house on decrease Fifth Avenue in Manhattan the place the inside designer Jeremiah Brent lives along with his husband and fellow designer, Nate Berkus, and their two kids.
An intimate gathering of about 30 visitors had assembled to have fun the publication of Mr. Brent’s first e-book, “The Space That Keeps You,” a set of photographs and tales of fascinating folks and their enviable homes.
For Mr. Brent, who together with Mr. Berkus is a mainstay on HGTV with exhibits like “The Nate & Jeremiah Home Project,” a house is a “bizarre mix of area and place.”
“You’ve bought to be in the proper place and have the proper area on the similar time,” he mentioned in an interview, talking from current expertise. Mr. Brent and Mr. Berkus initially lived on this house from 2013 to 2016, after they bought it and moved to Los Angeles. But they longed for what that they had beforehand had, and 7 years after promoting, they purchased the house again.
This was the primary time the couple have hosted a party since returning to their previous house. Amy Astley, the editor in chief of Architectural Digest, was there, together with Elle Decor’s editor in chief, Asad Syrkett, and New York journal’s design editor, Wendy Goodman. The designer Athena Calderone, the filmmaker Shawn Levy and Ashley Avignone, a stylist and good friend of Taylor Swift, orbited the eating space, the place a selection of intricate bites — duck fat-fried fingerling potatoes with creme fraiche and caviar, blistered shishito peppers with fennel pollen and lemon juice — had been artfully arrayed.
One visitor may very well be heard marveling at how good everybody regarded within the house’s not-too-dim-to-be-dramatic mild.
It was a scrupulous consideration to lighting that led Brooke Cundiff, a retail entrepreneur, and her husband, the author and editor Michael Hainey, to a West Village house that was subsequently featured in Mr. Brent’s e-book. But earlier than settling there, they checked out a whole lot of locations that didn’t really feel like dwelling. Mr. Hainey developed a check: With every house they’d enter, he’d ask, “OK, it’s a Wednesday. You needed to name in sick to work. Can you think about being dwelling on this house all day? Like, how is the daylight?” He added, “On your worst day, is that this going to make you cheerful?”
Another visitor, Antoni Porowski — the meals and wine skilled on TV’s “Queer Eye” — mentioned that, to him, a house is made up of the issues that remind him of the place he got here from.
Mr. Porowski was nonetheless dwelling in a small studio when he bought a pair of Adnet chairs from 1stDibs. His house on the time was barely large enough to accommodate them. Now, the chairs sit in a spot in his lounge the place they don’t get a lot use, however he nonetheless likes to stare upon their burgundy leather-based, considering again on the “tiny studio residences with one drawer and two functioning kitchen burners” the place he used to dwell.
“Every time I have a look at them, I keep in mind what that was like, what my life was like, and the way a lot it modified,” he mentioned.
