Korban Ryan - Ryan Korban: luxury redefined

FOR ANTOINE AND CAROL

CONTENTS

F rom the moment I met Ryan Korban, when we were both studying at university, I was struck by his expressive personality as well as his innate creativity. We instantly bonded over our mutual love of fashion and design, and we became frequent collaborators and devoted friends.

Ryans sense of design has always been inspired by fashion and his knowledge of art history. He can just as easily identify a piece of clothing or a shoe by both designer and season as he can a rare antique or a painting by artist and year. His interests are deep and varied, and his work is the ultimate reflection of this. In any one of his rooms one can find references that run the gamut from the Italian Renaissance to the mod styles of the 1960s. His playfulness is always counterbalanced with definite sophistication and elegance.

Ryan has become known for interiors that incorporate classic luxury with a modern feeling. He reinterprets his love of old-world elegance and style in a new and fresh way using the exotic skins, textural fabrics, sleek surfaces, and shiny metals that have become his signature. Mixing old and new, high and low, Ryan has an uncanny ability to both elevate a space and infuse it with a youthful sense of ease. Clients come to Ryan for his fabulous taste and walk away with an expertly designed space.

Although his career is in its early stages, Ryan has already managed to accomplish an incredible amount. His spaces are not only extraordinarily striking but also truly inspiring.

VICTORIA TRAINA

I didnt set out to be an interior designerat least not at first. From the age of four, I thought I wanted to be an actor. I spent a lot of time at the theater, fascinated by period pieces from Shakespeares plays to The Phantom of the Opera. Later on, I studied acting in college at The New School in New York City, where I realized it wasnt just performing that intrigued me but the costumes and set design as well. I went on to take a lot of art classes and to study European history; at the same time, I pursued an underlying love of fashion by interning for a designer. Ultimately, all those interestsart, fashion, history, and theatercame together in a way that drew me toward interior design and creating residential and commercial environments with a luxurious sensibility.

While I was still in school, my friend Davinia Wang and I started discussing an idea for a store. She had a passion for shoes; I had a growing interest in interior design; and we shared a similar aesthetic taste. We came up with the concept of a small neighborhood boutique that would carry an array of luxury brand accessoriessomething we felt was lacking in New York City. We went to look at spaces and found one we loved tucked away in Tribeca. Taking a leap of faith, we went for it, naming the shop Edon Manor after a house in the English countryside.

Inspired by the look and feel of an English library, I went to work on the design for the shop, conceiving a space with antique chandeliers, hooded Louis XV chairs, silk curtains, and tufted ottomans. The idea was to integrate the accessories with the dcor: shoes would be displayed on a silver tray or teeter atop a pile of books. We had a watercolor rendering done of the store, and we packaged it with marketing materials, tied them with a beautiful ribbon, and sent it all off to brands like Azzedine Alaa, Givenchy, and Nina Ricci, which we hoped to carry. We were thrilled that they not only liked our vision but also wanted to be a part of it. In 2007, just about a year and a half after our initial conversation, we opened for business.

We conceived Edon Manor to be a commercial space that didnt look like one. Walking past the boutique, you might think its a gallery, a salon of some sort, even a living room. Its only when you get closer to the windows and can see the products inside that it becomes evident that Edon Manor is an accessories shop. Weve had customers come in wanting to buy the couch. People have commented on how much they love the bookshelves, which are filled with art and fashion volumes that Ive collected specifically for display. Some have even said they wanted their house to look like the shopwhich is not a usual reaction when you enter a store. Hearing comments like this made me confident that people liked my aesthetic. It wasnt long before I started helping friends decorate their apartments and, through word of mouth, began receiving design jobs for a range of projects, including other stores, showrooms, and event spaces. Thats how my career as an interior designer began.

When I am asked to describe my style, I often say that it has three critical elements: sex, romance, and fantasy. When I say sex, Im talking about allure, seduction, and mystery. My father, who is Lebanese, owned a hair salon outside Philadelphia. As I look back, he was like a Middle Eastern version of the sexy Beverly Hills hairdresser played by Warren Beatty in Shampoo, driving a sports car with his shirt buttoned low. My mother, who was twenty years his junior, was tall and thin, had long red nails, and wore lots of makeup. There was a definite sexual charge between them, and they were always getting dressed up and going out somewhere. Id be asleep on the couch by the time they came home, and my mother would cover me in her fur coat. Because of them, Im very comfortable with overt sexuality and have always been drawn to it. Its what feeds my need for design elements with a harder, more animalistic edge, like zebra skins, leather chairs, crystal ashtrays, and brass lamps.

That said, Im also inclined toward the romanticflowers, classic figurative sculpture, and weathered antiques. I think my love of romance can also be traced back to my parents and the dcor of their house, which was awash in pastels. Our living room had Louis XIV chairs done up in pale pink silk taffeta and matching love seats in seafoam green. As I think of it now, it was kind of horriblein an amazing waybut back then I thought it was beautiful, and I always wanted to sit in there. My mother, however, never allowed thatexcept on special occasionsand she always knew when Id snuck in, from my footprints in the white pile carpet. Later on, my fascination with romance was fueled by an art history course on the Elizabethan era and another on classical artists and composersworlds that enthralled me with their pageantry and flourish. When I started designing, I realized that a magical thing happens when you bring together objects that convey sex and romance, such as a sleek brass art deco coffee table with an antique marble bust on it. You create a sensory impression that is at once hard and soft, masculine and feminine, and there is something very alluring about that juxtaposition.

The third element is what I refer to as fantasy. I like there to be a sense of imagination or a bit of daring in a rooma quality you dont see very much in design magazines. I like an exotic, unusual statement on a grand scale, such as a large white taxidermy peacock on a small console table or a living room covered with a panoramic mural. From my early career on, the spaces Ive loved the most have been those that incorporated all three of these elements into their design, and this has inspired me to do the same in my own work.

Of course, there is a positive and a negative side to not having been schooled in interior design. In the beginning, my lack of formal training really freed me. I thought about designing spaces without constraint. As a result, though, I also made many mistakes. But I have learned something from every project Ive done and have drawn inspiration from the world around me. In choosing fabrics, Ive referenced fashion collections as well as art photography. Ive called on striking bouquets for color ideas. In the beginning, I struggled a lot when it came to metals, thinking they had to be consistent throughout a whole room. And then I saw a vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre watch with a silver-and-gold bandIve been mixing chrome with brass ever since.