baroque

I am not at all sure how many times JonBenet Ramsey has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal since 1996. Today we find her name, fittingly, in the fashion section in a Katherine Rosman article about the way talented interior designer, Ryan Korban --

The Anti-Minimalist

Published in The Wall Street Journal

by Katherine Rosman

"Interior designer Ryan Korban is 25 years old, loves stuffed peacocks and hasn't had a single day of formal training. "People pay me a lot of money and I don't even know how to draft a floor plan," he says.

His design resume includes the apartment of actor James Franco; he decorated Mr. Franco's dining room last year to resemble an Ivy League library. Mr. Korban also recently dressed the bedroom of model Jessica Stam in tweeds and silks.

"Ryan understands fashion," says 26-year-old fashion designer Alexander Wang, who had Mr. Korban redo his apartment twice and oversee the design of his New York showroom. "He takes someone's personal style and translates that into an environment."

...From nearly every inch of wall space hangs ornately framed photographs and paintings. There is a black-and-white print made with paint and magic marker on vellum that was the first piece of art he bought, for about $700; a massive photograph of a performance artist writhing in mud and a flea-market painting of a little girl from the 1800s in fancy clothes. "She's like a renaissance, baroque JonBenét," Mr. Korban said....[..read more]