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“Now, it’s wide-leg pants, a little crop top, and one of those Chanel jackets my mom wore over them. It’s my go-to look,” designer Ashley Stark says of her current uniform before adding long coats and beanies to the list—after all, it’s the middle of winter in New York. Sitting in her Upper East Side townhouse, it’s exactly what the creative director of Stark Rugs and founder of Ashley Stark Home wears. Today’s edition includes a stripped cashmere crop top, Neely Lotan pants, a kite belt and Tabitha Simon platforms – oh, and a hand-padded CHANEL jacket. As usual for Stark, the color spectrum of the entire collection ranges from beige to creamy white to off white.
“I’m surrounded by color and pattern all day long, and I tend to just forget about it, which is why my house and closet aren’t that colorful,” she says. At first glance, this feeling is practical. Her home may only offer that bright, hotel-clean feel with a muted color palette, but it stops short of monasticism. Each cream ensures individual plots. “If you break it down, there’s a texture, it’s different. [shades], the wallpaper is covered in metal,” she says. “There’s always something.”
The closet is more than it gives itself credit for, or at least its contents do. The space (about the size of a bedroom) is quiet, empty—you guessed it—white. Since the pandemic, this “closet” has become an office in addition to its storage space. “I try to keep it more organized,” she says. “Otherwise, you’ll see a hanging bra in the background [of a zoom]He said. Behind her desk and Lucite chair (she might have chosen differently had she known the WFH lifestyle), three mismatched Noguchi lamps hang from the ceiling, and two-door mini closets cover the space. Open a collection, and you’ll find chunky sweaters in neutral colors (the sartorial siren song on this chilly NYC day). But open another, and it’s rows of tweed Chanel jackets. She pulled out one in orange and gold, one pink and trimmed in patterned silk, then another boasting pastel yellow—a miniskirt to match. As we teased at Chanel, Stark opened a low drawer, from which she piled turquoise jewelry on her dresser.
Chanel jackets in her mother’s and grandmother’s curvy taste, turquoise is the product of her godmother Iris Apfel’s eclipse (Stark found Apfel’s carpet company, Old World Weavers, in 1992). Style develops her family heritage and business acumen; Stark considers herself lucky to have grown up in a family circle of such women. Her grandmother, she pretended, always “dressed her to the nines in Chanel clothes.” Very correct. Very mixed. Apfel served as Grandpa’s sartorial character foil. “Since I was six years old [she] Don’t always listen to them all. Be who you are. Always keep it accessible. The bigger, the better. More colour.’ She’d take me to these design meetings, and ‘nobody would answer. Ashley, what do you like?'” Her mother was a mixture of these two emotions. “Fearless, precise, trendy, in every style, but such a strong woman who listens to no one but herself.”
Stark taught her to believe in her own style early on. (In the past, she convinced her father to add more feminine colors like gray and lavender; gray is now their best-selling color.) That said, she began her Stark journey in obscure roles below. “It was very important to my father that I learn all aspects of the company,” she says. Although it’s a more corporate entry for business, Stark goes in the opposite direction when it comes to dressing for the office. “My legs were pretty ripped from the Manolo days,” she laughs, then says seriously, “Where most people were wearing theory clothes, I was in these dresses with lots of jewelry and high boots.” She began to pay attention to herself, noting that her colleagues often comment on her collections. “I realized that fashion can be powerful.”
Since then, she’s channeled that personal flair not only into a lead creative role at the company (in addition to founding Ashley Stark), but also into her personal Instagram account. Next to footage of her own home, there are images of a stunning light fixture from Veronique Cottrell’s Paris project or the stairwell of Amber Lewis’ home. “It was when I first started. [essentially] She describes the Pinterest board: “I do all the designing for Stark. I’m constantly looking for inspiration, and it was a way to organize my thoughts,” she says. Suddenly she had 10,000 followers. Soon, she started making things a little more personal by inserting herself (and her collections) into the conversation. “It’s funny, a lot of the DMs I get are about my fashion, what I’m wearing,” says Bananas. “I swear, if I forget to label something, I get 500 DMs, ‘Where are those shoes from? Can you tie your pants?’ This luxe is yet to come; most of the working mom’s look is simply made up of knits, tailoring and denim. So you can understand why she has over a million followers. “People always write to me, ‘It came for the home, it stayed for the fashion’.” Shop her closet essentials here.
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