EnterZoe Cohen’s Brooklyn apartment, and you’ll find a curated collection of midcentury classics blended with contemporary quirk. After living in a Chinatown apartment with three roommates, the born-and-bred New Yorker needed space to breathe and—like most Manhattanites looking for more square footage—decamped to Brooklyn. Zoe’s new home in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, which she has shared with her boyfriend Levi Shaw-Faber for the past year, gives her room to experiment with her own interior style in a way she wasn’t able to before. The result is a decidedly “not boring” mix of new and old, calm and fun.
Zoe, who spent five years running social media and influencer marketing at Marc Jacobs, now heads brand marketing for the ultra-cool underwear brandParade, which is known for its brightly colored, sustainable fabrics. “I have super loud and colorful taste when it comes to fashion,” says Zoe, “so I intentionally wanted my home to feel a bit more calm and peaceful, with colorful elements.”
Levi, a master’s candidate at the Yale School of Architecture, introduced Zoe to midcentury and Scandinavian design, both of which she says blend well with her love of eclectic vintage. While the couple’s home includes quirky pieces throughout—like theface vessels年代he picked up at Coming Soon—Zoe thinks the living room is “the vibiest.” Indeed, it’s a room filled with storied pieces.
Take the sofa, which Zoe discovered at New Jersey–based vintage shopTri-State Modern. The modular sectional wouldn’t fit in the couple’s small car, so they made multiple trips back and forth from Brooklyn. “When we finally carried the many pieces up the stairs, we put [them] in our living room, feeling especially pleased with ourselves, sat down, and immediately fell in between two of the ‘bread’ cushions that separated under us,” Zoe shares with a laugh. They’ve since connected the modular pieces together at the bottom, so sitting on the sofa is no longer hazardous. She adds, “It’s always a journey!”
