November 9, 2025A touch of California on the Hudson. That was one of the conceits driving designer Clive Lonstein’s makeover of a high-rise apartment on Manhattan’s far West Side offering both water and skyline views.
“All these different vistas, with the high ceilings, open loft-like living spaces and fantastic light, make this apartment really special,” says the South African–born, New York City–based Lonstein. “The client wanted a California influence — clean and streamlined and casual — emphasizing a lightness and a neutrality with lots of off-whites.”
Asher Liftin. All photos by William Jess Laird and styling by Brittany Albert
He started by rejiggering the layout to accommodate one of the client’s major asks — a generously scaled wine room — locating it right off the living room in a spot previously occupied by the primary suite. (The sleeping area moved to a corner on the opposite side of the apartment with equally enviable views.) Collaborating with Vineyard Wine Cellars, Lonstein custom designed the oak-paneled, climate-controlled space and outfitted it with a large integrated fridge and lots of softly lit floor-to-ceiling shelves. A set of glass double doors leaves the interior of the wine room visible while allowing light from within to cast an atmospheric glow.
The client “just loved the aesthetic of having that be part of the entertaining spaces,” the designer says. “You have that warmth and that richness that you see, something that really adds to the mood and the ambience.”
Lonstein has a well-honed flair for cultivating a distinctive, luxurious sensibility. He held top design roles at Tiffany & Co. and Studio Sofield — where he worked on retail projects for the likes of Boucheron, Gucci and Tom Ford — before starting his own firm, in 2016. While most of the commissions he and his team take on today are residential, they have done “some select commercial projects based on clients wanting the work to not feel commercial,” Lonstein says, pointing to a Miami office interior and Paine Field, a two-gate private airport outside Seattle.
The designer recently debuted his first furniture collection, a line of minimalist cast-glass tables, one of which — an asymmetric rectangular coffee table in the translucent greenish Clear Ice colorway — the client chose for the living room here. Arrayed around the table are a plush sofa and lounge chairs upholstered in pale cream fabrics, as well as a pair of svelte Jacques Adnet armchairs with curvaceous frames wrapped in soft leather, instilling texture and vintage character into the space. Next to the sofa, a 1950s striped ceramic lamp, attributed to the Swedish maker Rörstrand, adds an animating hit of pattern and color.
With serenity prevailing throughout the apartment, the client’s art provides the boldest visual pops. Greeting visitors in the entry are a torrid expressionistic landscape by Mimi Lauter and a wall of vivid polychrome ceramic reliefs by Carla Accardi. Just beyond, outside the wine room, a quartet of Franz West steel chairs with seats and backs woven from exuberant synthetic textiles are grouped around a sculptural Forma & Cemento table acquired through 1stDibs. A large Asher Liftin portrait of a woman in hazy, pixelated tones presides memorably over the living room.
The den (essentially a cozy, casual extension of the living room) demonstrates Lonstein’s gift for creating compelling interplays between materials and textures. He anchored the space with an inviting linen-covered Montauk sofa that wraps around a NONO two-tone oak coffee table sourced on 1stDibs. Beneath the TV, a Jonathan Nesci floating aluminum shelf — also from 1stDibs — is mounted on a wall of bleached-oak paneling. Nearby, a built-in bar features open white-lacquer shelves backed by an earthy Phillip Jeffries grass cloth. The room, says the designer, “is a great hangout, just really comfortable.”
Meals are enjoyed in the kitchen’s intimate breakfast area — furnished with a custom corner banquette and vintage Charlotte Perriand stools that offer low-key seating around a Moroccan table — or in the adjacent dining room, where the scene stealer is a wall-spanning Thomas Struth photograph of an artificial Route 66 canyon landscape at Disneyland. The image’s rosy tones are echoed in a Phillip Jeffries textured wallcovering that provides a warming counterpoint to the room’s floor-to-ceiling industrial-inspired shelves by Rimadesio.
Enhancing the room’s minimalist vibe is a simple Parsons-style lacquer table that Lonstein designed and surrounded with pared-down chairs, all in white and seeming almost to float over the ebony-stained flooring.
“We wanted to contrast the table off of the floor,” says the designer. “There’s a starkness, a cleanness, to the room, where the Struth artwork really is the key piece.”
The homeowner’s expansively scaled bedroom is dominated by a massive, custom-designed nine-by-nine-foot Alaskan king bed. “I love the horizontality of the low upholstered headboard,” says Lonstein, who designed it with with floating nightstands by Rimadesio, as well as elegant Adam Otlewski sconces, acquired from 1stDibs, that have pleated-parchment shades with hand-stitched edges.
At the foot of the bed, a pair of vintage chairs complement a Paul Mathieu biomorphic Plasterglass table. With the exception of a punchy, predominantly black Raymond Saunders painting between the windows and the bed’s rich-earth-tone coverlet, throws and accent pillows, the room is a symphony of soft whites, from the wallcovering to the Holland & Sherry curtains to the gridded Patterson Flynn carpet.
“It has a warmth to it, even though it’s very minimalistic,” says Lonstein, who tabs the room as one of his favorites. After all, who wouldn’t want to wake up cocooned in elevated California style, enjoying quintessential New York views of the Empire State Building bathed in the morning light.
