In 1964 they called it the British Invasion. The Beatles crossed the Atlantic and captured a generation of American fans. Six decades on, a quieter conquest is underway. Sans screaming, fainting and knicker-throwing, British contemporary craft and design labels are taking the New York interiors scene by storm — despite the 10 per cent levy on most goods imported from the UK to the US. The crowd is going wild for this group, nicknamed the NyLon (New York/London) designers.
Among the rock stars of NYC x Design week last month were an unprecedented number of Brits. Russell Pinch threw open the doors to the Apartment, his ground-floor flat/showroom in a Greenwich Village brownstone. Pinch, whose studio specialises in understated artisanal furniture and lighting crafted in solid oak and walnut as well as more esoteric materials from abaca fibre to Jesmonite, arrived with an established transatlantic following. During a broadcast from John Legend’s sitting room in 2020, fans spotted Pinch’s Anders light and “the phones went mad” with US inquiries. Five years on, the clamouring for his quiet aesthetic continues: every slot to view the Apartment was booked up as soon as the designer opened his appointment diary. At the moment about 45 per cent of Pinch’s work finds its way across the Pond and, the designer says, appetite is increasing, with demand on both coasts and in affluent US design hotspots such as Dallas.
The feeling is mutual. The reason British creatives adore the land of the free? Pinch says: “In England, when the interior designer proposes something quite interesting or outlandish or expensive, the Brits will largely say, ‘Oh, why? Why do you think we should do that?’ The Americans will say, ‘Why not?’”
A couple of miles across town, Ochre’s design week installation included the Marea, a Murano glass pendant in watercolour blues, greens and greys that evokes the light on the Venetian lagoon. The maker of arty lighting, which opened its showroom in the SoHo district in New York in March, now sells roughly two thirds of its products in the US. Fun fact: in London, the Ochre store is a near-neighbour of Pinch’s showroom, in the Pimlico Road design district, which in turn is a stone’s throw from Soane Britain, another US success.
Its founder, Lulu Lytle, is famous in the UK for her commitment to craft, rescuing the country’s last rattan workshop from closure and putting the makers to work on her own woven furniture. The company opened an appointment-only space on Madison Avenue in September 2023, and about 60 per cent of Soane’s designs are exported to North America.
Back in Tribeca, another brilliant Brit, Alex Tieghi-Walker, was exhibiting the Johnny family of lighting by Faye Toogood in his fifth-floor apartment/showroom. The industrial backdrop of the Manhattan loft space, aka Tiwa Select, proved the perfect foil for Toogood’s ethereal paper lanterns in the shape of condoms. Craft, slang and entry-level smut combined — there has probably never been a more quintessentially British exhibition.
Of course, British brands have long tickled the fancy of the US market. Kathryn Ireland, a decorator working on projects from Manhattan to Montecito, says her clients admire the old-school chintzy end of the aesthetic spectrum: Robert Kime, Nina Campbell and Bennison Fabrics. The founder of the New York studio Apartment48, Rayman Boozer, is a fan of the more flamboyant expressive Brits: Matthew Williamson, Timorous Beasties, Designers Guild and Susi Bellamy. Boozer says: “British designers tend to create from a place that’s more innate. They seem to understand that things should feel more permanent and have a place in time. Soane Britain is a good example of how designs can feel like they’ve always been there but really belong to this moment.”
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There’s also a fondness for the dramatically decorative interiors, tracing their ancestry back to the Bloomsbury Group, of Kit Kemp, the co-founder of Firmdale Hotels. The latest of her establishments opened on Warren Street in March 2024, joining the Crosby Street hotel in SoHo and the Whitby in Midtown. Kemp’s rich mix of textiles and artworks (often depicting dogs), Porta Romana lights, Christopher Farr fabrics and Wedgwood tableware resonates with the Lower Manhattan locals as much as it does with Londoners. Talking transatlantic design crushes, let’s not forget the US love affair with deVOL and Plain English, two British companies with New York showrooms, supplying painted wood kitchens with a “below stairs at Downton Abbey” vibe — kissing cousins of the kitchens seen in every Nancy Meyers rom-com, from The Holiday to Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated.
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Most recently it’s the contemporary crafted look of Pinch, Ochre and Soane that has caught the American imagination, and the chart-topping creative in this category is undoubtedly the Londoner Lee Broom, known as “the designer who put Beyoncé in a swing”. In 2020 Mrs Carter borrowed one of Broom’s Hanging Hoop chairs for her visual album Black Is King and then bought it for her home. By 2021 Broom had made over his Tribeca duplex as a by-appointment showcase for his collection, which this May included the drapery-inspired wallcovering line Overture, launched with Calico Wallpaper. Over half of Broom’s sales are to US buyers, for whom he has created scaled-up designs that fit in with the larger footprint of many American homes. Broom says: “Beyoncé bought my piece because it was playful and interactive, and she decided to buy it once she actually saw it in person. This is something I feel is more common in the States than Europe, that people want to see the actual product face to face before they decide on making any kind of purchase. Which is why having a space to show your work here is key.”
The NyLon design brands aren’t just selling to a clientele of Americans. The demand for their work is partly driven by the number of Brits who are investing in homes in the Big Apple. For instance, Christian Candy has just bought a $47 million four-bedroom triplex in the slender skyscraper at 111 West 57th Street. It’s the building where the London-based designer (and husband of Princess Beatrice) Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi has decorated a 76th-floor duplex apartment.
Highlights of the interiors include an Elena chandelier by Nicky Haslam in the bedroom and a gleaming nickel bathtub with a stonking view of Central Park, custom-made by the British manufacturer William Holland. Few British buyers dream of living in a contemporary glass building on Billionaires’ Row — most aspire to the period properties in the older areas of town.
The real estate agent Jessica Taylor moved to the States more than a decade ago, and is now on Ryan Serhant’s team — and is a star of the Netflix show Owning Manhattan, series two of which hits our screens later this year. The Englishwoman says: “A lot [of Brits] are relocating for work now, maybe their kids are coming to college over here and they want to move over. They typically will veer towards quieter neighbourhoods like the West Village. Brooklyn Heights is really popular right now. I had a British couple who thought they really wanted Tribeca, but once I took them over to Brooklyn Heights — a very peaceful, cobblestoned, tree-lined neighbourhood— they fell in love with it. British buyers want character.”
Eric Brown, a NYC agent and the co-founder of Elevated Advisement, agrees with Taylor: “Our British and European buyers seem to be especially drawn to West Village townhouses and conversion apartments. The scale and detailing feel familiar, echoing the types of homes they’re used to in Europe, including London. Often on viewings buyers want to know how design wise they can bring out details such as original fireplaces.” Because they are choosing properties with period features that remind them of home, expats frequently engage London-based interior designers who understand the British aesthetic for their renovation projects. When Taylor did up the kitchen in her pied-à-terre in Gramercy Park, she worked with the rising-star British interior designer Isy Runsewe.
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Taylor describes the anglicising of the Big Apple since she arrived, ticking off the latest instances of the trend: Robin Birley, the proprietor of some of London’s smartest clubs, is planning to open Maxime’s, a new private club, on Madison Avenue; English boarding schools including Ampleforth and Marlborough are now holding class reunions in New York, and Harrow will open its international school in September on Long Island — and there’s the influx of British creatives selling crafted, contemporary design. Forget the Fab Four. It’s time to raise a pint to Pinchmania.