Photography Courtesy of Cure Design Group
Before she started the grind of classes at Washington University School of Medicine, Chicagoan Celina Jacobi found herself a loft in the Central West End and hired an interior designer.
“When we first walked in, the place was completely staged: generic, bland, and completely not her taste,” recalls the designer, Megan Dunkmann. “She wanted young, hip, fun—a mix of Anthropologie with a little bit of modern and a few antiques.” Dunkmann’s challenge was to take all the wildly different kinds of things Jacobi likes—she emailed photos from Chicago—and mix them in a way that felt cohesive.
In other words: the challenge of young adulthood, applied to design.
Jacobi knew her priorities: a cozy retreat where she could study in comfort; a sociable space, so she could get her mind off dread diseases and relax with friends over wine, dinner, or a movie; and a guest bedroom, so family and friends could come to stay.
She’d already made one purchase, a clean-lined gray Chesterfield sofa. But she loved color, especially the saturated warmth of magenta and turquoise and the sunny, cold splash of citron yellow. So Dunkmann, an associate designer with CURE Design Group (curedesigngroup.com), made a palette of soft grays and drizzled bright color on top. She striped the walls in a gray-and-cream chevron pattern and added a stroke of inspiration: a single chevron of citron yellow, right at table height. Then, armed with color swatches, she went shopping.
She hit Rothschild’s Antiques just before it closed. One of her prize finds: an old globe with seas of turquoise and countries in magenta and citron. To match her client’s eclectic taste and stay within her reasonable budget, Dunkmann looked everywhere: Jonathan Adler, Global Views, and HomeGoods, “which is very hit or miss,” she notes, “but if you’re patient enough, you can find some really cool things at good price points.” One of Jacobi’s favorite sites, Etsy (etsy.com), yielded paintings and pillows.
Dunkmann created a sense of entry with a vignette that feels quite French: a console table, a flirty flower pouf, an antique mirror, a chunky turquoise elephant, and a dramatic coral lamp. The living-room area’s focal point is a hard-edged, square resin table, made to look like reclaimed wood, then glazed metallic. Its clean edges are surrounded—and softened—by a playful rug, the sofa’s tufts, the pillows’ billowy curves. In the dining area, acrylic chairs refuse to block the light from a dramatic window wall.
Dunkmann mischievously covered a column at one end of the kitchen’s island bar with charcoal blackboard paint, so Jacobi could jot reminders or a grocery list, and her friends could write her notes. The bar’s lit by three pendants from Stray Dog Designs, their drum shades striped white-and-citron, with a tiny papier-mâché bird perched on a swing just below.
Those lamps were one of the first purchases; like the sofa and the white lacquered dining table, they led to other decisions that helped the loft take shape. That’s how design—and life—work: You find something you love and build on it, and everything else falls into place.
