WORDS BY REBECCA RHYS-EVANS

They say your home is an extension of you. If this is true, Sean McNanney – the interior designer, artist and founder of cashmere label, Saved NY – is someone you’d like to invite to your dinner party. His Williamsburg apartment, which he shares with husband Sinan Tuncay, is full of adventure and curiosity. Visiting could be compared to wandering around an Istanbul bazaar, but one portrayed in a Wes Anderson film. Ottoman ceramics here, some Moorish vases, rugs, mirrors, masks, busts over there… Oh and 400-odd snuff boxes, which he admits he has somewhat of an addiction to collecting. The walls are laden with a 3D wallpaper made from paintings, portraits, photographs and crucifixes that he has accumulated over the years. Everything, including his joyous colour palette tells a story. The yellow living room, for example, is inspired by one of McNanney’s heroes, decorator Nancy Lancaster, who popularised English countryside style in the 1920s.  

Of course being a textile designer, there’s an abundance of fabrics and textures, giving it the warmth and cosiness one wants from a home. He tells us that after a long stint designing at Ralph Lauren, he started Saved NY through a family connection to Mongolian cashmere and collaborates with various artists to inject a different perspective into his designs. His homeware pieces, including these sumptuous blankets and pillows, have the can’t-help-but-touch softness you’d expect from timeless cashmere furnishings, whilst Fee Greening's celestial motifs give them a contemporary edge.

Made from sustainably sourced yak down, camel hair and Mongolian goat cashmere, which as McNanney says, is ‘the finest cashmere in the world’, each piece is designed in Brooklyn, and produced by hand by skilled craftsmen in Mongolia. Getting a tour of his apartment it is clear where he draws inspiration for his ethereal, nomadic designs – the mood board in his mind has been translated into the physical world around him, and what better muse than one’s own home?