Price drop hits luxury reclaimed apartment interiors in New York

Posted on | By Thornton Kay
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New York, USA - The well-crafted interior, which included input by artist salvageur Thierry Despont, of the 6,000sqft Tribeca loft apartment of J Crew CEO's Mickey Drexler is for sale on Franklin Street. Originally priced at $35m last April, it was dropped to $29m and now appears to have gone south again - this time to $25m.

Last year it was reported that Drexler was selling because he did not spend enough time in the apartment, had one too many homes, and no longer had a use for it. The home featured Louis Sullivan-style Diocletian arched windows clad in reclaimed pine boards in their original paint. Despont also had a hand in designing interiors for Bill Gates and Calvin Klein.

This April, amid concerns about the slowing luxury market, Alchemy Properties brought in a new team to market 33 condos in the Woolworth Building with a planned makeover of interiors designed by Thierry Despont 'who had gone for a more 1920s look' with the previous conversion. Alchemy paid $68 million to acquire the top 30 floors of the historic building. Prices ranged from $3.5 million for a 1,200 square foot apartment on the 44th floor and a rumored $110 million for the penthouse.

In 2006 Thierry Despont created a cabinet of insect curiosities made from scrap metal for a New York art exhibition 'Through The Moon Door', following another anthropomorphic found object sculptures entitled 'Masks'.

"To feel as if they've entered a dream world, to be challenged visually and see things unseen," is how architect, designer, and artist Despont hoped people would respond to the Cabinet de Curiosities, inspired in part by Despont's early memories of the Parisian taxidermy store, Deyrolle. He came from Paris, and now lives and works in New York.

Despont's own insect-like creatures made of discarded tools and objects were set against a backdrop of eighteenth-century boiseries forming walls of the exhibition's five-room suite and were shipped from the famed Steinitz Gallery in Paris. "All are suddenly connected by a trompe l'oeil philosophy: to challenge the eye and soul of the viewer."

Mickey Drexler is credited with Gap's meteoric rise during the 1990s which he left in 2002, reportedly fired by Gap founder Donald Fisher. The J.Crew Group started in 1983 with a catalogue, and expanded into bricks-and-mortar retailing in 1989 in New York City. J. Crew hired Drexler who sought to reposition the brand as an upscale boutique. Mickey Drexler, who was on Apple's board from 1999 to 2015, made a guest appearance in an episode of Breaking Bad in which he played a car wash customer.

Thierry Despont studio
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Story Type: News