{"id":1346,"date":"2026-03-23T01:38:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/?p=1346"},"modified":"2026-03-23T01:38:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:38:52","slug":"athena-calderone-remembers-new-york-in-the-90s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/athena-calderone-remembers-new-york-in-the-90s\/","title":{"rendered":"Athena Calderone Remembers New York in the \u201990s"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Clement Pascal\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>

F<\/strong>ew people get interior-design enthusiasts going like Athena Calderone, the founder of EyeSwoon and Studio Athena Calderone and a mainstay on the covers of design tomes like\u00a0Architectural Digest<\/em>.<\/p>

Deep in renovations for her new Tribeca home, Calderone is taking necessary moments to celebrate. So she and her husband jaunted uptown to Grand Central last Friday afternoon to do just that alongside a brand that she credits with boosting her career to where it is today. \u201cI really do attribute Apple and the iPhone to my evolution as a designer,\u201d she told The Cut just after the company\u2019s 50th-anniversary New York festivities. \u201cHow I style has always taught me something through the lens, or if I\u2019m traveling around the world and pulling references for a design project.\u201d\u201d<\/p>

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From left: Victor Calderone, Tim Cook, and Athena Calderone attend Apple\u2019s 50th-anniversary celebration. Photo: Theo Wargo\/Getty Images for Apple\/Courtesy of Apple<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The afternoon had a special resonance for the New York\u2013born and \u2013raised Calderone, who watched fellow New Yorker Alicia Keys perform in one of their city\u2019s greatest landmarks. The designer\u2019s move has her reminiscing about her early years in nightlife, which gave her a crash course in culture. \u201cI was bartending at the Tunnel and Limelight and working at Indochine and all the cool places that are getting so much attention again,\u201d she reveals. \u201cI saw designers and artists commingling, and for a Long Island girl, it was my first time seeing such diversity.\u201d<\/p>

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Apple kicks off its 50th-anniversary celebration with Alicia Keys.\u00a0Photo: Theo Wargo\/Getty Images\/Courtesy of Apple<\/figcaption><\/figure>

And there are so many more things on Calderone\u2019s creative mind. We got into it all, including how she feels about being imitated and the difficulty women entrepreneurs are having keeping their businesses open.<\/p>

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Fans gather in Grand Central Terminal for an Alicia Keys performance in celebration of Apple\u2019s 50th anniversary.\u00a0Photo: Theo Wargo\/Getty Images for Apple\/Courtesy of Apple<\/figcaption><\/figure>

You\u2019re not new to it, but it\u2019s a major accomplishment to have an Architectural Digest cover story. How do you know when your home is finished enough for you to show the world?\u00a0 I love a deadline. I knew it was going to be a cover for quite some time, and I also knew that I was creating a new world and new identity for myself as a designer. I was a beast in curating and collecting and visiting auction sites. But once all the finishes were installed, which I\u2019d been collecting for three years while designing the home, that\u2019s when the fun stuff came in and I got to tinker and play.<\/p>

I wanted a home that would level up or compare to my townhouse, because the townhouse was perfect. And when I walked in there, our new home took my breath away and still does. Our son was leaving to attend college. And\u00a0I was just ready to pop into an art show or meet a friend for a drink and not have to go over the bridge at the end of the night.<\/p>

Tribeca is getting a lot of pseudo-fictional attention right now thanks to\u00a0Love Story<\/em>. Do you remember that time in the \u201990s and how cool the neighborhood was?<\/strong>
The \u201990s in NYC were just legendary. I moved to the city in 1995, which was right in that Carolyn Bessette era, but I wasn\u2019t in Tribeca a lot back then. I had a shaved head and a septum ring. I had a full-on punk-bad-girl look. People always say they need to see a photo of me from that era, but those photos just don\u2019t exist. There was an energy then that doesn\u2019t exist today.<\/p>

It\u2019s epic to have a portion of Grand Central shut down for a performance by an iconic artist to celebrate Apple having such a major milestone. What has your relationship with the company been like over the years?<\/strong>
I really do attribute Apple and the iPhone to my evolution as a designer. How I style something has always taught me something through the lens, or if I\u2019m traveling around the world and pulling references for a design project, my phone helps me reference where I\u2019ve been and details that are lingering within a hidden drawer in my mind that I can go back to and the drawer flies open. And aside from the iPhone, the first thing I was doing was photo editing with Apple products. And when I think about the evolution to now as I\u2019m a more established designer, I\u2019m working in Rhino and SketchUp and all of these programs that allow me to see and track the evolution of a project and my design journey. If I go back to see my growth as someone who styles spaces and is crafting a photograph, I use my iPhone to track the minutiae that makes a room sing.<\/p>

You are so imitated. How do you feel about that?<\/strong>
I know that people get really burned up and upset about it, but I don\u2019t. It was a huge factor in why I sold my townhouse, though. I was seeing carbon copies of my kitchen, and at first it was so flattering. But then an entire building went up in Williamsburg that was everything in my kitchen, and I thought, It\u2019s time to move on<\/em>. When I designed this home, and especially the kitchen, I did think about materials that were harder to copy.<\/p>

I got sued this year for copyright infringement, and I\u2019ve learned a really hard lesson to make sure you\u2019re not using someone else\u2019s images. I remember thinking, It\u2019s so interesting, because someone can copy my design and there\u2019s nothing I can really do about it. Someone needs to figure out how to protect interior designers\u2019 IP, but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s possible. Travel is also something that\u2019s part of your ethos, and you inspire folks to do that all the time. What\u2019s your favorite travel memory? I didn\u2019t go to college, and I don\u2019t want to frame it negatively, because I don\u2019t look at it like a wound. But I carry something in me that wants to always self-educate. So I went on this pilgrimage to Vienna solo \u2014 just to study the Vienna secessionists, go to the Mak Museum, get inspired, and visit Adolf Loos\u2019s American Bar. I also ended up going to Paris and Milan on that trip, and to Villa Necchi Campiglio. I feel like that museum and my home are stepsisters that have the same bloodline \u2014 in my mind, anyway. As a designer, all you can do is make sure you\u2019re educated and feeding your eyes.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few people get interior-design enthusiasts going like Athena Calderone, the founder of EyeSwoon and Studio Athena Calderone and a mainstay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"[]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1347,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/1347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undies.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}