Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York 2025

Rachel Fasciani hails this year’s edition of the New York event as the best for ten years

The much-anticipated Kips Bay Decorator Show House opened on Tuesday (29 September), dazzling guests with a seamless flow of design from entry to exit. Set within a six-level, 1900 Greenwich Village townhouse at 12 West 20th Street, the residence departs from the Show House’s traditional uptown venues—and the change of scenery feels both refreshing and perfectly suited. 

More than twenty acclaimed designers, including Cathy Purple Cherry, Leyden Lewis, Alexa Hampton, Corey Damen Jenkins, Olivia Williams, Charles Pavarini and Jack Ovadia, brought the home to life. The unofficial thread weaving their work together: dark, moody palettes, jewel-toned accents, and verdant greens that layer richness, depth and duality. Underfoot, luxurious carpets and rugs from Rug & Kilim, Tai Ping, Patterson Flynn, Crosby Street, STARK and Marc Phillips provided the foundations upon which designers built their visions, anchoring a residence that reads like a jewelled jewel box. 

Eye of the tiger

The entryway, themed A Midnight Check-In, sets the tone and immediately steals the show. Designed to evoke a dreamscape in midnight blues and muted metallics, the space stuns with sculptural and textural detail: an S-Helix woven-reed sculpture by August Lehrecke for Ralph Pucci, a custom Shakúff rock crystal chandelier, and the pièce de résistance—a tiger motif runner, created in collaboration between Tai Ping and Jack Ovadia of Ovadia Design Group. 

Symbolising strength, courage and protection, the tiger appears throughout the entry in murals, passageways and on the staircase, hand-tufted in gradients of midnight, sapphire, and grey. ‘You can see the tiger peeping through the landscape,’ Ovadia noted. 

The animal narrative continues in Andrea Schumacher’s front parlour, where Sylvan’s charcoal resin rhino—a nod to the iconic Lalanne—perches atop a Rug & Kilim antique coral-toned Ushak. Schumacher carried the midnight blue theme forward with custom wallpaper adapted from scanned African-inspired emblems created by her grandmother. The effect is both personal and powerfully atmospheric. 

A jewel box

Ascending Ovadia’s staircase, guests encounter a series of spaces. In a former closet, Palm Beach designer Jim Dove conjures A Sanctuary of Thought. Carpeted in a Tai Ping/Fields design—amethyst hues framed in gold metallic threads—the intimate retreat glows against Arte’s Gobi Desert wallpaper. 

The jewel-toned story continues in Leyden Lewis’s living space. His custom Tai Ping rug, a patchwork of upcycled silk rugs in lavender and grey checks, speaks to both sustainability and design innovation, ‘I thought, you know what? Why don’t we upcycle?’ says Lewis. ‘We upcycled three of their existing silk rugs and put them together for this patchwork. What it did for us design-wise is [provide] that grid with intention for the curvilinear form.’ The contrast to Lewis’s signature curvilinear fireplace and rosy-toned, and comfy, Jab-Jab seating is notable.   

Alexa Hampton leaned into the exquisite for her guest bedroom, choosing wall-to-wall broadloom from Crosby Street Studios. ‘I like wall-to-wall underfoot,’ she insists. ‘This is a gendered choice. I find men want area rugs and women want wall-to-wall. There! I’ve said it! … I like it because it’s a barefoot space.’ She continues, ‘I picked a beige wall-to-wall because it is enough like a wood.’ Layered atop, a Scandinavian geometric rug introduces texture through purple top-knot designs, while grassy green walls, delicate purple florals and a canopy bed upholstered in green velvet strike balance. As Hampton put it, the room is ‘unapologetically pretty’—and it is.

The dream continues 

Throughout the home, creative visions abound. Olivia Williams draws on Japanese and North African influences, anchoring her space with a Rug & Kilim antique Tuareg and a 19th-century Japanese silk hanging. Charles Pavarini reimagines the way we live now with his forward-thinking Zoom Room, a study in adaptability and technology-infused luxury.

Taken together, the Kips Bay Showhouse feels like a love letter to the power of colour, craftsmanship and imagination. It is, quite simply, the most inspired—and inspiring—Show House in a decade.

Text by Rachel Fasciani