Tribeca Citizen | Loft Peeping: Mario Grauso & Serkan Sarier

Loft Peeping: Mario Grauso & Serkan Sarier

The September issue of Harper’s Bazaar features the beautiful fifth-floor Tribeca loft of Vera Wang president Mario Grauso (“a native New Yorker known for his power plays in the fashion field”) and Brood‘s Serkan Sarier (“a young designer whose soft-spoken English belies his Turkish-Bosnian-by-way-of-Germany upbringing”).

••• Sarier spotted the listing on StreetEasy. “It met all of the couple’s requirements: Grauso’s that it be more than 3,000 square feet (to accommodate the two busy professionals and their two dogs—a bulldog named Georgia and a pin-thin Italian greyhound named Lily—plus a bedroom suite for Grauso’s teenage son, Harry, on his frequent visits home from boarding school), and Sarier’s that it get lots of sun.” Harry’s room is the one with the red folding screen.

••• They let the writer in “days” after moving in. They’re admittedly anal-retentive: “Grauso and Sarier had done enough advance strategy to impress the joint chiefs of staff, including diagramming the floor plan of the three-bedroom apartment and numbering Polaroids of every George Smith sofa and Walton Ford print to a corresponding map.” That way, Grauser’s “secret fixer,” Big Mike, could put everything in the right spot.

••• Despite all of the what some might call hoarding—”including a cabinetful of oceanic curiosities, enough art books to fill the Parsons library, and a suit of Japanese armor”—they’re not done buying stuff for the apartment. “‘Mario doesn’t hold back,’ says Marjorie Gubelmann, Grauso’s shopping partner in crime, who has accompanied him everywhere from Sur la Table to Ted Muehling’s boutique. [That's about five blocks, by the way.] ‘He is loaded with bags. He’s like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.‘ Much of what he buys will be gifts for friends or family. ‘He is very generous,’ says Tory Burch, who in turn gifted them with an antique ivory hand from their mutual favorite shop, De Vera.” How come nobody buys me pretty little things from De Vera?

••• Grauso’s big photo collection includes a Horst print of Coco Chanel; Sarier has a stark image of a leather-clad Leigh Bowery.

••• “On nights at home, supper is served on Hermès plates at [...] the ‘take-out table,’ a marble round surrounded by toile chairs under a grand crystal chandelier—all transported from the Paris pied-à-terre that Grauso shared with his ex-wife.” Grauso is vegan and gluten-free, you’ll want to know.

••• “The leather-clad master bed headboard required many trips to a carpenter in Queens.” This is notable because Grauso has only recently warmed to the East Village.

Read the whole article here. The text is by Elisa Lipsky-Karasz, and the photographs are by Nicolas Koenig (click to enlarge). Anamaria Wilson was the sittings editor.