Few people get interior-design enthusiasts going like Athena Calderone, the founder of EyeSwoon and Studio Athena Calderone and a mainstay on the covers of design tomes like Architectural Digest.
Deep in renovations for her new Tribeca home, Calderone is taking necessary moments to celebrate. So she and her husband jaunted uptown to Grand Central last Friday afternoon to do just that alongside a brand that she credits with boosting her career to where it is today. “I really do attribute Apple and the iPhone to my evolution as a designer,” she told The Cut just after the company’s 50th-anniversary New York festivities. “How I style has always taught me something through the lens, or if I’m traveling around the world and pulling references for a design project.”
From left: Victor Calderone, Tim Cook, and Athena Calderone attend Apple’s 50th-anniversary celebration.
Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Apple/Courtesy of Apple
The afternoon had a special resonance for the New York–born and –raised Calderone, who watched fellow New Yorker Alicia Keys perform in one of their city’s greatest landmarks. The designer’s move has her reminiscing about her early years in nightlife, which gave her a crash course in culture. “I was bartending at the Tunnel and Limelight and working at Indochine and all the cool places that are getting so much attention again,” she reveals. “I saw designers and artists commingling, and for a Long Island girl, it was my first time seeing such diversity.”
Apple kicks off its 50th-anniversary celebration with Alicia Keys.
Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images/Courtesy of Apple
And there are so many more things on Calderone’s creative mind. We got into it all, including how she feels about being imitated and the difficulty women entrepreneurs are having keeping their businesses open.
Fans gather in Grand Central Terminal for an Alicia Keys performance in celebration of Apple’s 50th anniversary.
Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Apple/Courtesy of Apple
You’re not new to it, but it’s a major accomplishment to have an Architectural Digest cover story. How do you know when your home is finished enough for you to show the world?
I love a deadline. I knew it was going to be a cover for quite some time, and I also knew that I was creating a new world and new identity for myself as a designer. I was a beast in curating and collecting and visiting auction sites. But once all the finishes were installed, which I’d been collecting for three years while designing the home, that’s when the fun stuff came in and I got to tinker and play.
I wanted a home that would level up or compare to my townhouse, because the townhouse was perfect. And when I walked in there, our new home took my breath away and still does. Our son was leaving to attend college. And I was just ready to pop into an art show or meet a friend for a drink and not have to go over the bridge at the end of the night.
Tribeca is getting a lot of pseudo-fictional attention right now thanks to Love Story. Do you remember that time in the ’90s and how cool the neighborhood was?
The ’90s in NYC were just legendary. I moved to the city in 1995, which was right in that Carolyn Bessette era, but I wasn’t in Tribeca a lot back then. I had a shaved head and a septum ring. I had a full-on punk-bad-girl look. People always say they need to see a photo of me from that era, but those photos just don’t exist. There was an energy then that doesn’t exist today.
It’s epic to have a portion of Grand Central shut down for a performance by an iconic artist to celebrate Apple having such a major milestone. What has your relationship with the company been like over the years?
I really do attribute Apple and the iPhone to my evolution as a designer. How I style something has always taught me something through the lens, or if I’m traveling around the world and pulling references for a design project, my phone helps me reference where I’ve been and details that are lingering within a hidden drawer in my mind that I can go back to and the drawer flies open. And aside from the iPhone, the first thing I was doing was photo editing with Apple products. And when I think about the evolution to now as I’m a more established designer, I’m working in Rhino and SketchUp and all of these programs that allow me to see and track the evolution of a project and my design journey. If I go back to see my growth as someone who styles spaces and is crafting a photograph, I use my iPhone to track the minutiae that makes a room sing.
You are so imitated. How do you feel about that?
I know that people get really burned up and upset about it, but I don’t. It was a huge factor in why I sold my townhouse, though. I was seeing carbon copies of my kitchen, and at first it was so flattering. But then an entire building went up in Williamsburg that was everything in my kitchen, and I thought, It’s time to move on. When I designed this home, and especially the kitchen, I did think about materials that were harder to copy.
I got sued this year for copyright infringement, and I’ve learned a really hard lesson to make sure you’re not using someone else’s images. I remember thinking, It’s so interesting, because someone can copy my design and there’s nothing I can really do about it. Someone needs to figure out how to protect interior designers’ IP, but I don’t know if it’s possible.
Travel is also something that’s part of your ethos, and you inspire folks to do that all the time. What’s your favorite travel memory?
I didn’t go to college, and I don’t want to frame it negatively, because I don’t look at it like a wound. But I carry something in me that wants to always self-educate. So I went on this pilgrimage to Vienna solo — just to study the Vienna secessionists, go to the Mak Museum, get inspired, and visit Adolf Loos’s American Bar. I also ended up going to Paris and Milan on that trip, and to Villa Necchi Campiglio. I feel like that museum and my home are stepsisters that have the same bloodline — in my mind, anyway. As a designer, all you can do is make sure you’re educated and feeding your eyes.
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