THE CHAINSMOKERS ARE NEVER GETTING OLDER
Written by Joana Ferreira
Photography by Andrew Kung
It is customary to say that the house is a mirror of the soul. If true, then it would be natural that a man who’s achieved fame and wealth mixing music would be drawn to a house that is a hodgepodge of architectural styles. The Hollywood Hills home that Alex Pall—half of the Chainsmokers, a Grammy winning EDM-pop duo—bought two years ago was built in the 1930s, with renovations in both the 1980s and 1990s adding a dash of industrial edge.
The mashup appealed to Alex, but when it come to decorating it, he sought professional help from interior designer
Peti Lau, who capitalized on her rock-star client’s open mind and unique art collection (he majored in art history and music business as a student at New York University), by dialing up the intensity of the décor.
“AristoFreak” is the term that Lau has coined to define her signature style, in which she expresses her worldly inspirations with myriad colors, patterns and textures to create romance and moods in all of her spaces. The style emerged from Lau’s adventures as an expatriate and her early career in Thailand, Mauritius and Europe. “It’s an ideology of Old-World charms adapted for modern living,” Lau explains.
“The house had this built-in eclecticism,” said Lau, a Chinese-Vietnamese American born in Israel, and now based in New York City, whose own influences might be similarly characterized. “It felt appropriate to approach each space as its own unique environment,” she added. Lau brashly mixed decades and colors, and incorporated Pall’s burgeoning contemporary art collection, an approach that provides consistency from one room to the next.
Pall had already installed the nature-themed wallpaper and acquired an orange velvet couch for the family room when Ms. Lau began her work. In the living room, she continued with the “interior jungle theme,” as she called it, with a natural fiber coffee table that evokes dried versions of the leaves of the wall, as well as leopard and tribal-print pillow. The orange, green and blue palette of the painting by Hassan Hajjaj (the “Andy Warhol of Morocco,” according to Lau), recurs in trippy throw pillows from Silken Favours and the vintage Turkish rug laid atop a larger jute rug. “A classic antique rug is a nice way to stabilize all the stuff that’s going on,” she added.
Pall's first career Grammy, won in 2017 for Best Dance Recording “Don’t Let Me Down,” rests atop a striking Monocles sideboard by Essential Home. “The mid-century brass circle scale just worked so perfectly with the natural stones and was a perfect place for that piece. It’s a great spot to showcase the Grammy!” said Lau. From room-to-room, Pall and Lau’s collaboration strikes a perfect chord.
