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Toshiko Mori, architect: \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby\u201d (1968)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in the late 1960s<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I came to New York from Japan with my family to attend high school. One of my first assignments at the summer school I attended that year was to write an essay comparing the 1967 novel \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby\u201d by Ira Levin with the film adaptation by Roman Polanski. The building in the movie is called the Bramford, but the exteriors, famously, were those of the Dakota on the Upper West Side. What struck me about the movie\u2019s apartments was their aspect of interiority \u2014 the way they seemed to harbor secrets. I also remember their small, framed views of high-rise New York City buildings. Even though the film is, of course, a horror story and the building turns out to be cursed, \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby\u201d only made me more excited about living in New York. Coming from Japan, I was used to stories about ghosts and evil spirits. So in an absurd way, it made the city feel more familiar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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John Derian, 60, designer and retailer: \u201cEasy Living\u201d (1937)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 1992<\/p>\n
I was a child who on Saturdays watched every old movie on TV: the 12 o\u2019clock, the two o\u2019clock, the four o\u2019clock and, if I could get away with it, the six o\u2019clock. One of my favorites was the screwball comedy \u201cEasy Living,\u201d starring Jean Arthur. The movie takes you all over New York through multiple dwellings, from a mansion on Fifth Avenue to a little room in a boardinghouse where Arthur\u2019s character lives for seven dollars a week, culminating in an over-the-top Hollywood Regency-style suite at the fictional Hotel Louis with sky-high ceilings, a grand piano and an ornate plunge tub. \u201cWow,\u201d I thought. \u201cAll this in one city? Sign me up!\u201d I still love the smoke and mirrors of a good set, and I\u2019m basically doing the same thing today in my shops, creating a little fantasy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Stephen Alesch, 57, designer: \u201cBatman\u201d (1989)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 1994<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Growing up in Milwaukee and later in the Los Angeles area, I loved Batman comics. When Tim Burton\u2019s \u201cBatman\u201d came out, I ate it up. The Gotham of the film was Manhattan exaggerated, and the neo-neo gothic sets blew me away. I loved the shadowy wet streets, the balconies up high in the mist, the buttresses and water towers. One interior that particularly struck me was Vicky Vale\u2019s (Kim Basinger\u2019s) penthouse, with its shiny tile walls and sweeping steel arch covered in rivets. During my first stay in New York in 1991, I couch surfed with friends and walked the streets for hours, taking in the Chrysler Building, Tudor City, the fire escapes of the Lower East Side. I couldn\u2019t help seeing the city through a noirish lens. Within a few years I moved to New York for good, and I still push for rivets on projects and try to add a vaulted buttress wherever I see an opportunity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Loren Daye, 48, interior designer: \u201cShe\u2019s Gotta Have It\u201d (1986)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 1996<\/p>\n
I was 21 and living in Chicago when I first saw \u201cShe\u2019s Gotta Have It.\u201d Much of the film takes place in Fort Greene, but the protagonist, Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns), lives in a semi-empty loft in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, among scrap pieces of wood, buckets of paint and her collages. The loft is painted almost completely white and has incredible arched windows and geometric light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, the whole space anchored by her bed at the very center. The bed has a latticed headboard where she lights dozens of candles every evening \u2014 it\u2019s like a shrine to her sexuality. That room was my dream, representing freedom, honesty and self-realization. A year after I saw the movie, I arrived in New York. In 2003 I finally found a place in Fort Greene and I\u2019m still here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Billy Cotton, 42, interior designer: \u201cInteriors\u201d (1978)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2000<\/p>\n
When I moved to New York to study Russian history at Hunter College I had no inkling I would become a designer. But I do remember watching Woody Allen\u2019s \u201cInteriors\u201d \u2014 I think my parents had the VHS cassette \u2014 when I was a kid in Burlington, Vt. The matriarch of the story is Eve, an interior designer played by Geraldine Page, and the film\u2019s rambling, sparsely furnished apartments formed my idea of an extremely glamorous New York. Now, looking back at the movie\u2019s spare, monochromatic interiors, I feel like they\u2019re oddly prescient of the current trend for entirely beige, cream and white spaces. But they\u2019re also sort of timeless. This city throws so much visual energy at you on a daily basis, and I love the idea of having just a couple good things you can take with you from place to place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Tal Schori, 43, architect: \u201cThe Hunger\u201d (1983)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2003<\/p>\n
I grew up in the New York suburbs in the 1990s and the city always held a somewhat intimidating allure for me. This was epitomized in the noirish vampire movie \u201cThe Hunger,\u201d which I first saw as a teenager. David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play the undead lovers John and Miriam Blaylock, who live in a luxurious prewar townhouse near Central Park. Dramatically lit through sheer curtains, the house, with its high ceilings, elegant French doors, paneled walls, ornate moldings and opulent stone cladding, exuded a certain languid luxury and dark transgressiveness. I was seduced. By 2003, I had arrived in New York, renting a modest one-bedroom in a 1960s brick co-op in Ditmas Park.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jared Blake, 33, furniture designer and retailer: \u201cHey Arnold!\u201d (1996-2004)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2005<\/p>\n
To me, Arnold\u2019s room in the Nickelodeon series \u201cHey Arnold!\u201d is legendary. The show is set in a fictional city called Hillwood, but there\u2019s no doubt in my mind it\u2019s modeled on New York. Arnold had a Murphy bed, a skylight, track lighting, a giant water dispenser and a funky red rug kind of like the one in \u201cThe Shining\u201d (1980), but more mod. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when I was 7, but I visited New York four times a year to see my dad, who lived in Harlem. I think I knew early on that the city was where I was meant to end up. It\u2019s been 16 years since I arrived, and I\u2019m realizing now that I may have subconsciously created my version of Arnold\u2019s room in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. I have a Murphy bed and track lighting, and the whole vibe, like Arnold\u2019s, is very eclectic. I\u2019m just missing the skylight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Farrah Sit, 41, furniture designer: \u201c9\u00bd Weeks\u201d (1986)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2005<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I grew up in Kingston, N.Y., just two hours away, and when I was a kid, the sensory overload of New York City \u2014 the noise, the stink, the heat \u2014 was intense for me. So the interiors in \u201c9 \u00bd Weeks\u201d were a revelation: an expression of austere minimalism and an aspiring art school kid\u2019s dream. Elizabeth\u2019s art gallery loft was a light-filled box that seemed to float above the chaos of the city. John\u2019s monochromatic, museumlike penthouse, with its furniture by Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, was luxurious and restrained. These spaces played with light, shadow and texture, expressing an aesthetic that resonates with me to this day. After 18 years living in New York, I still respond to the intensity of the city by creating a feeling of serenity in my work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Fabiana Faria, 37, retailer: \u201cThe Hours\u201d (2002)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2007<\/p>\n
Meryl Streep character\u2019s in \u201cThe Hours,\u201d Clarissa Vaughan, lives in a rustic, rambling, flower-filled home in downtown New York where she often hosts parties. I first saw the movie when I was 14 and living with my parents in Caracas, Venezuela. I wanted to believe that one day I would have a home in New York like that where I would host gatherings of interesting people and be able to walk everywhere, dropping by the butcher or the florist, who both knew me. There are several scenes in Clarissa\u2019s wonderful open kitchen, which has a big stove, hanging pots and wood floors. When I moved to the city I had no illusions of living in such luxury \u2014 I shared a two-bedroom with three other roommates on Roosevelt Island \u2014 but I held on to that vision of a warm, lived-in, well-loved New York apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Luam Melake, 36, furniture designer: \u201cParty Girl\u201d (1995)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2011<\/p>\n
When I first saw \u201cParty Girl,\u201d I was 22 and living in San Francisco. Posey\u2019s character, an aspiring librarian who prioritizes fashion and parties, struck me as a shinier reflection of my life as a clothing-obsessed pseudo-librarian \u2014 I worked at a bookstore \u2014 who earned a living basically just to dress up and hang out. Posey\u2019s character lives in a dingy loft in Chinatown that mainly houses her wardrobe and record collection. It\u2019s a flexible space that she transforms for each party. When I was 24, I moved to New York with just my books and clothes and lived in a series of odd spaces around Chinatown. I was always out \u2014 and absolutely thrilled to be here. I\u2019m still a fashion-forward librarian now, at Parsons, and I make flexible furniture designed for better social interactions. I spend less time at parties and more time imagining them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Minjae Kim, 34, artist and designer: \u201cBasquiat\u201d (1996)<\/strong><\/p>\nMoved to New York in 2015<\/p>\n
I was in high school in Korea when I first saw the artist Julian Schnabel\u2019s \u201cBasquiat,\u201d a movie about navigating the New York art scene that feels more and more authentic to me as time goes by. I was struck by Basquiat\u2019s East Village apartment, covered wall to wall with his own work, and by the loft apartment of the fictional artist Albert Milo (played by Gary Oldman), where art handlers carried around paintings big enough to be theater backdrops. I was captivated by the romance of living among one\u2019s own work, in a space oriented around the creation of art. The film was inevitably a reference for me when I moved from Seoul to Spanish Harlem and even again last year, when I moved to Bed-Stuy, into my first apartment by myself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n