In the early 1990s, Robert Rufino walked into the Gucci boutique on Fifth Avenue and ordered a pair of made-to-measure shoes—single monk straps in burnished leather, based on a design from the company’s archives. “Since then, I’ve probably had at least six pair in black and six in brown, and that’s what I wear—they’re part of who I am,” says the renowned editor and stylist, sitting on an armless velvet sofa in the living room of his Sutton Place apartment. “And I guess my home kind of echoes that.”
A Giacometti plaster lamp and Fornasetti plate are among the belongings that have accompanied Rufino to nearly every home he’s lived in. The mirror, which he had stripped and antiqued, holds postcards from travels far and wide.
Stephen Kent Johnson
A large abstract print by Arthur Ou rests on a table in the gallery. Rufino had cabinets filled with coral at his former house in Bridgehampton; a few pieces are still scattered throughout this apartment.
Stephen Kent JohnsonLooking around the room, the comparison seems less far-fetched than one might imagine. Nearly every item—save for that sofa, a relative newcomer—has been a decades-long companion, each one tied to a moment in his storied career. There are the chairs he bought at Lord & Taylor in his early twenties, when he had just gotten his first job as a window dresser at Henri Bendel. There’s the pair of marble-topped desks that once displayed jewelry in the Schlumberger boutique at Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue, where he was vice-president of worldwide creative services for 13 years. There’s the large-scale photograph—a negative image of ice, printed on metal—given to him by William Abranowicz, one of the interiors photographers with whom he frequently collaborated while on staff at magazines like Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and House Beautiful, and now as a contributing editor to FREDERIC . “Every object in this apartment means something to me, and has value,” he muses.
Rufino purchased the French antique steel daybed for his first apartment at 82nd Street and Riverside Drive. "It was the third one I bought—the first two wouldn't fit through the door, so I had to return them. But this one comes apart," he explains. Its function has changed throughout the years, he adds, but "sometimes I'll still spend a Sunday there reading or taking a nap. It's always been a part of my life."
Stephen Kent Johnson
An étagère from Mecox Gardens is filled with a trove of art and design books. The shells were once part of a vast collection in Rufino's former Bridgehampton home.
Stephen Kent Johnson
"I love traveling and doing shoots and running around and seeing other places, but I just feel very at peace here," says Rufino, pictured.
Stephen Kent JohnsonThat surety of self-knowledge is even more remarkable given the trend-driven realm in which Rufino works. “You get to travel to incredible houses, to castles, to beautiful apartments, places that are just magical. You’re influenced by so much—you think, ‘Oh my god, this is great, I want to change this and that when I get home,’” he explains. “But then when I open the door to my own apartment, it’s my space, and I want it to feel like me. I don’t think your house should be trendy—your home is who you are.”
The entry hall is lined in paper-backed wool fabric typically used for men’s suiting and separated from the main salon by heavy wool curtains. “Every night, I put on my pajamas and pull the curtains closed—it’s my sort of ritual,” says Rufino.
Stephen Kent Johnson
Rufino enlisted Fresco Decorative Arts to transform his kitchen walls with black plaster. A friend scribbled Twombly-esque loops on the window using white oil pencil to create a privacy screen.
Stephen Kent Johnson
Fresco also lacquered several doors in a deep, dark red, inspired by a similar finish that Rufino fell in love with at the Connaught hotel in London.
Stephen Kent JohnsonRufino has lived in this particular home for going on 16 years. “I had been living in a studio on the Upper East Side, which I loved, but one day, I said, you know what? I need a bigger apartment,” he recalls. His real estate agent brought him to a prewar co-op near Sutton Place to show him an apartment. “He told me that there was another one like it coming onto the market, but it wasn’t ready yet.” Undeterred, Rufino asked to see it anyway. “Half the floors had been torn up, there was acid on the walls, but as soon as I walked in, I knew there was something about it. I felt like I’d been there before.”
The “Brooks Brothers blue” bedroom captures the apartment’s gentlemanly appeal, with a bench upholstered in striped tie silk and a headboard in haberdashery windowpane wool.
Stephen Kent JohnsonSlowly, Rufino transformed the space to fit his iconoclastic vision of a gentleman’s salon, leaving no surface unconsidered. He stripped nearly all of the doors to reveal a gray-tinted wood that looks almost like patinated steel, and had the remaining few lacquered in coat after coat of deepest red. The walls of the kitchen were covered in black plaster and buffed to a high-shine finish and the entry hall swathed in wool used for men’s suiting. Even the closets are their own works of art, their shelves meticulously wrapped in Indian printed cotton, filled with a collection of objects—postcards, snapshots, bits of ribbon and feathers—arranged with a sense of artistry worthy of a Tiffany’s window display. “It’s a little bit mad,” Rufino laughs.
An Indian block-printed cotton lines every surface of Rufino’s closets—even his ironing board is covered to match.
Stephen Kent Johnson
A 1960s Slim Aarons portrait of Desmond Guinness and his children hangs in the adjoining bathroom.
Stephen Kent JohnsonMad or not, the result is undeniable: a sanctum of calm six floors above 57th Street, a shrine to the kind of beauty created by time and memory. Rufino knows this, too: “Every morning, I wake up and sit here in the quietness and think to myself, Oh, I live here. It’s a very, very nice life.”
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 17 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!
