June 2013

JUNE 2013

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A Tale of Two Houses In both their city apartment and their country retreat, a young couple put family-friendly design first without sacrificing the slightest hint of chic Written by Sarah Storms Photographed by Ball & Albanese Produced by Kaylei McGaw and Sarah Storms C onceptualizing a home as a pair is no easy feat. Contrasting ideas, upbringings, and aesthetics can make settling on one consistent style a lesson in compromise—or a dissonant jumble. So when Ken and Anika Yael Natori settled into an apartment on New York’s Upper East Side in 2009, they faced the same quandaries shared by many young couples: how to articulate a common design vision. Unfussy Anika, originally from Oregon, favored breezy, colorful interiors, while Ken, raised in Manhattan, spent his childhood surrounded by 146 Lonny treasured objets d’art (his mother is designer Josie Natori, founder of the eponymous lifestyle brand and a fervent collector of antiques). And that didn’t even take into account two important factors that lay in their immediate future: the couple’s children, Cruz (now three) and Zoe (now one). Enter the interior designers. Eight months pregnant with Cruz at the time of the move, Anika knew she needed help with the apartment—and fast. They called upon their friend Nicki Rose, whose design input yielded a sophisticated living room in soothing neutral tones. Modern sofas and a Ken and Anika Yael Natori with their children, Zoe and Cruz, by the pond on their property in Pound Ridge, New York. Lonny 147