To woo their clients, decorators regularly come equipped with fabric swatches, tile samples, and other tactile hints at rooms to come. Darren Jett goes for an even more full-sensory experience. As part of his presentations, the designer prepares a soundtrack that embodies not only the interiors he’s envisioning but also the lifestyle he hopes unfolds there. In the case of the Manhattan loft that he recently renovated for finance executive Christopher Chiou, that playlist included disco hits, underground dance tracks, and George Michael classics—songs that capture urbane gay abandon. “Every project should feel like a movie,” Jett reflects. “This character felt close to my world. I knew his plot.”
Chiou bought the apartment, a classic SoHo artist’s loft, in 2021, amid the city’s pandemic real estate slump. At the time, he had been back on the East Coast for only a few years after 17 in San Francisco, where he rode the boom-and-bust cycles of the tech industry. But New York quickly settled into home for the New Jersey native. And so, following stints renting in Chelsea and the West Village, he decided to lay proper roots, visiting a listing that had languished on the market. “Immediately it felt like something different,” he recalls of the open and untouched space, which had undergone only ad hoc renovations over the decades. “I saw the potential to do something special.”
Enter Jett, whose work Chiou had encountered through a mutual friend. The designer was then early into his practice, having struck out on his own in 2020 after cutting his teeth at the New York firms Ash and Rafael de Cárdenas. “I was excited to work with someone who was excited about the opportunity,” reflects Chiou. Never mind the project’s modest scale—Jett delighted at the prospect of a gut renovation, his imagination spinning with romanticized visions of gritty 1970s downtown Manhattan.
