Supermodel Karlie Kloss Sets Up Her First Home in New York City
by Emily Holt | photographed by Jason Schmidt
"I’m not used to being me in a photo,” says Karlie Kloss, who, in spite of her protestations, seems perfectly comfortable doing exactly that. Naturally flashing her sly, alluring smile and leaning ever so effortlessly against her kitchen counter, she looks every inch the supermodel. Still, she’s on to something: Since the age of fifteen, Kloss has perfected the art of embodying someone else’s vision. But representing herself, in the first home she can call her own—a West Village town house purchased just last year? “It’s taking me out of my comfort zone,” she says with a laugh. Then she falls back on a familiar move: the trademark supermodel jump. “That jump paid for this house,” Kloss, now visibly more relaxed, says—and she’s only half-joking."
"Though few other 21-year-olds have the means to buy such an impressive starter home in one of Manhattan’s most-sought-after neighborhoods, as Kloss is quick to point out, “I’ve worked really hard to be in this position.” In the last five weeks alone, she’s traveled between jobs in New York, Zurich, London, New York again, Madrid, back to London, New York, London for the third time, St. Barth’s, back to New York, then Paris, and now back again. It’s the kind of itinerary that makes it easy to understand why, having kept such a pace for most of the last six years, Kloss had never really felt at home anywhere. Now that she’s in her early 20s, though—adulthood, really—she felt it was finally time to plant some roots."
photos by jason schmidt for vogue us
"Kloss shopped around for two years before finding this somewhat hidden, greenery-covered home on a quiet street a few blocks off the Hudson River. She liked the notion of being in the West Village—it’s where most of the people she’d met said they would want to live—along with the small garden in front where she could plant flowers and herbs. The interior, however, was an unknown frontier. “I really had no experience at all decorating or being a homeowner,” Kloss says. “I knew I wanted to make it mine, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about doing that.”
"Enter Nate Berkus, whom Kloss knew of from his appearances on Oprah and had then met through a mutual friend. “I’ve been in the business a really long time,” Berkus says, “and to work with someone who gets so excited over the delivery of a mirror is really nice.” The two set about creating a home that reflects both Kloss’s personal style and her age. With iron hooks from Anthropologie, a waterfall-style console from interior-design resource Made Goods, and the mirror Berkus is referring to (a custom brass–shark tooth piece from Chicago-based Antiques on Old Plank Road), her rooms are luxurious without being overly cluttered with inappropriately expensive rarities. “I wanted to mix and match the same way I do with fashion—wearing, say, a beautiful Saint Laurent tailored blazer with an H&M T-shirt,” says Kloss, who paired high-end feather wallpaper from Lee Jofa with drapes from Restoration Hardware. Since, at the moment, she’s wearing a cozy Theyskens’ Theory sweater and skinny jeans, it’s clear that comfort and a sense of warmth are priorities, too—hence the mostly neutral tones and tactile properties of everything from an ivory sheepskin bench in her living room to the grass-cloth wallpaper in the kitchen nook."
Kloss and Berkus also purposely left room to grow in the multilevel house. Though the guest bedroom upstairs is currently the “shove-everything-in-there-and-close-the-door room,” as Kloss calls it, at some point she’ll likely convert it to an office for her many side projects—including (at the moment) her jeans collaboration with Frame Denim and her philanthropic, nutrition-focused vegan baking business, Karlie’s Kookies. Downstairs in her “football-watching room” (she roots for her home team, the St. Louis Rams), there’s just a big comfy couch from Restoration Hardware and a black-and-white print from her first shoot with Arthur Elgort. (She’s also awaiting the arrival of two wildlife-themed photographs from her friend Patrick Demarchelier, which may end up here as well.) She plans on filling up the empty spaces with souvenirs from her travels down the road—most recently she brought back a hand-woven throw blanket from a trip to Myanmar.
The room Kloss really loves, though, is the kitchen. On the marble counter near her beloved cherry-red KitchenAid mixer is a photo of herself with Momofuku Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi, her Karlie’s Kookies partner. When she’s not striding down the runway wearing Oscar de la Renta, Anthony Vaccarello, or Donna Karan, Kloss is fond of charmingly folksy aprons embroidered with such sayings as a balanced diet is a cookie in each hand and cookie queen—and she’s recently been making English toffee from her uncle’s secret recipe. Call it Karlie’s Kholesterol. “It’s everything my cookies aren’t,” says the model, who eats mostly vegetarian and stocks her kitchen with quinoa flour.
As far as comfort zones go, then yes, we’re standing in the sweet spot, so to speak. But in the process of buying and decorating her first house—learning to communicate her taste, work within a budget, and stand up for everything that’s important in truly making it hers—it’s clear that Kloss has become more confident in her decisions. “As models, we’re dressed in everyone else’s designs, but this is my space,” she says. “It’s definitely been an opportunity for me to learn who I am.”
photos by jason schmidt for vogue us
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