Thomas Britt Outfits a Sleek Space in New York

This article originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Architectural Digest.

The veteran New York interior designer Thomas Britt knows how to create a glamorous interior better than anyone, so when he promised to give "an Adrian kind of feeling" to an austere industrial building, he knew precisely what to do. As Adrian, the legendary costume designer, knew, glamour is an elusive quality. To achieve it, Britt sought inspiration from his clients: a couple, both in international finance, and their adorable young son.

"My goal was to make a chic, 21st-century home for a young international couple," Britt says of transforming their generic six-story loft building in Tribeca into a single-family house. His plan, executed with associate Valentino Samsonadze, involved creating the illusion of architecture where there was none and emphasizing unconventional color combinations, luxurious textiles, mother-of-pearl and lacquered antiques—and contemporary art (the couple collect works by Indian and Pakistani artists but also pieces by Americans, including Louise Nevelson and Sol LeWitt).

Britt set a youthful tone in the entrance hall, a two-story space with a steep steel stair. "We needed to warm up the hall and make it more inviting," says Britt, who cleverly divided the space into zones (with soft, floor-to-ceiling draperies, dramatically tied back) in order to foreshorten its appearance. He saturated one wall in red lacquer, then hung on it three "triumphantly scaled" diamond-paned mirrors of his own design.

他还知道如何添加一个ght touch to a room. Lest anyone find the Louis XVI painted console in the entrance hall fuddy-duddy, he put a pair of French 1940s plaster "iceberg" lamps on it.

A small guest room tucked into the rear of the first floor is equally lighthearted. Cozy as a cocoon, the room is dominated by a gold, divanlike bed set into an alcove and partly hidden by thick, turquoise-blue draperies. Red pillows on the bed make the blue and gold pop. Small tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl add an exotic note. An Indian dhurrie with blue, gold and red pulls it all together.

在马ny town houses, the main public rooms are on the second floor. Britt's treatment of the vast double-height living room is especially fresh. The crisp palette is set up by the 22-foot-tall white draperies with an enormous swag trimmed in red. An overscale white Murano glass chandelier towers over a white sofa, red barrel chairs and a red-and-white carpet. "When you're in this room, you don't know what country you're in," Britt says happily. "You could be anyplace. The décor is influenced by all the places I've been."

The adjacent dining area has a drop ceiling—to create intimacy—with a strongly lit, lacquered cove. Britt lined shelves on one side of the space in flat coral to better show off a collection of Lalique glass, Parisian and Italian ceramics and Wedgwood urns. He designed the black center-pedestal dining table and the contemporary white leather chairs.

After hosting a dinner, the couple may invite their guests for a liqueur in the chic, faux-suede-lined library or, better yet, a drink in the wine cellar, a room right out ofArabian Nights. "The clients requested that this room reflect, in a 21st-century manner, the part of the world they come from," Britt says. "I wanted to make it a high-fantasy room." Every surface of the room is decorated: walls, floor and ceiling. A suite of furniture by designer and sculptor Alexander Von Eikh includes a high-backed sofa "fit for a pasha." The silver-leafed plaster palm torchères, a Serge Roche design, add a tropical touch.

The luxurious master suite is equally glamorous but in a more Adrian, 1940s Hollywood fashion, with silver-leafed walls, blue-and-silver draperies and silver floor lamps (an original Britt design). In the pale bedcoverings and upholstery fabrics, Britt has purposefully combined fine low- and high-luster silks to give "texture," he says. He also created an extra-long double chaise that the couple can sit on together.

An unusual chandelier distinguishes the dressing room. The fixture is another commission executed by Von Eikh with featherlike petals that, when lit from below, cast mysterious shadows on the ceiling.

"The glamour radiating from that chandelier goes straight through the entire room," Britt says. The chandelier is trademark Britt: unexpected, highly inventive and magical. Like the rest of the house, it shows that Britt is a man of many talents. He has the historical understanding of old-fashioned, Adrian-style glamour, the imagination to update it for the 21st century and the skill to carry out such schemes to perfection. The clients may not know how he does it, but they are completely seduced. But, then, that's the whole point, isn't it?