styleNorth

Kevin is one of the best stylists I’ve met. He sometimes works with Leslie Zysman at Toronto’s Eclectisaurus, which is how I discovered the undeniable force of his talent. I was at the store one day then went back the next afternoon to pick something up and discovered that the shop had been completely re-arranged. Kevin had worked his magic, re-styling, re-organizing, re-imagining vignettes. I requested a lesson then and there.

Kevin offered to let me see his hallway, above, a small piece of his private world that he’s particularly proud of. He has dressed up the entryway with a mosaic of mismatched carpet tiles; the floor is a strong compliment to the artwork and the modern and post-modern furnishing–an Eames chair by the door, a Memphis perch outside the kitchen.

Kevin lives in an exquisitely detailed 550 square foot apartment in downtown Toronto, a space that now bares little resemblance to the flat he moved into six years ago. Last year, he fell from a ladder and put his elbow through some drywall in his hallway, which lead to the discovery of a hollow niche that he promptly re-framed to create a superb nook for a solid teak gun cabinet that he has re-vamped with spectacular results (below). Of course, being Kevin, he dressed the nook in a vintage wallpaper that absolutely sings.

Because of its original purpose the cabinet had no horizontal shelves so Kevin went fishing at the city dump—I’ve begged him to take me there sometime—where he found superb stand-ins that he had cut to fit. The original drawer pulls were frightening so Kevin scoured Toronto for just the right ones, which he found at Lee Valley; they were $15 each but did that dissuade him? Hardly. He also padded and lined the drawers with a luxurious Scalamandre fabric.

The gun cabinet personifies Kevin’s credo which I found spelled out in a vignette in his open bedroom closet. Who has vignettes in their closet? Kevin does. And there, in the centre of it all, is a plaque that reads, “Addicted to Beauty.” It’s a rare soul who can hew such a path in this rough and reckless world but Kevin fills the bill.

The closet, below, provides another great lesson in styling. Kevin ripped off the doors, ditched the hanging rod and installed shelving and a well-proportioned armoire. In so doing, he transformed a poorly designed utilitarian space into yet another opportunity to display his treasures.

Styling tips
When I asked Kevin to reveal some of his styling tips he immediately cited David Hicks, whose bold use of pattern, colour and sheen made him an interior design legend of the 1960s and 70s. “Hicks was very into symmetry,” notes Kevin, “but not in a really literal way. For him it was about volume and balance–you can put a square on this side and balance it with three circles on that side as long as they have similar scale and visual weight.”

For his work at Eclectisaurus, Kevin relies a lot on colour, which dictates natural groupings. He also makes the most of vertical space pulling the eye up and down in a fluid way.

Kevin’s own decorating choices reflect his preference for small vignettes: “You don’t have to style a room as a whole,” he says, “as long as you create beautiful little groupings. Those groupings don’t necessarily have to work with everything in the space, although colour helps to tie things together.”

Kevin also supports an old rule that says you should have six different textures in a room to give it depth. Not 26, six.

In my interview with stylist Arren Williams, he said that design talent can be taught. Kevin plants both feet in the opposing camp saying you either have it, or you don’t. He most certainly has it!