A Mother-Daughter Duo's Penchant for Charm Is on Full Display in This Apartment

The best inheritance in Mally Skok’s family is an unquenchable thirst for charm. We joined the mother-daughter duo on a tour of Gabriella’s New York City apartment and sought out the best secrets of their style DNA.

Q: I feel unbridled jealousy over your apartment. Tell me about it.

Gabriella:  It’s really a representation of our family. Both of my parents are South African and moved to England, where I was born. We moved to the States when I was little, so I’ve always had a global perspective on design and aesthetics, and traveling back to South Africa to visit my mom’s side of the family has been a huge part of my love of color and maximalism. Through my maternal grandmother, I inherited a deep relationship with antiques. It’s not just an affinity: They’re more than objects to us. They are living things we cohabitate alongside. Even the most cheapo basket that we bought in the market on a trip is an heirloom to us because it’s part of a shared memory from our travels together. It’s much like an eclectic mix of high, low; English, South African, New York cosmopolitan; a little bit old school, a little bit new school.

Layers of finds create a timeless, welcoming effect in Gabriella’s living room. One particular point of pride is the sofa, which is upholstered in fabric by Kentucky artist and textile designer Alex K. Mason of Ferrick Mason. “It’s the basis of this room,” Mally says.

The beaded mirror by Cape Town, South Africa, artist Michael Chandler; a Staffordshire spaniel figurine Gabriella picked up in Palm Beach, FL; and a lidded dish with a toucan top from the Chelsea Flea reflect her wide-ranging style roots. “I like having an eclectic mix of objects and time periods but constraining the color scheme so there’s visual harmony,” she says. The paper bleeding hearts are made by artist Livia Cetti of The Green Vase.

Q: Decorating this together, where did you disagree?

Mally: My vision lately has been doing a very light color on the walls then piling in the color and the textures with lots of artwork, so when Gabriella said she wanted an earthy red color for her walls, I have to admit I was not convinced. It sort of reminded me of my mom’s dining room in the ’70s in Johannesburg [South Africa]. She thought that dining rooms needed to have a warm color on the walls; otherwise, people would get up and leave her dinner parties! And she was right, actually. She once tried blue walls in her dining room, and all her dinner parties were failures after that [laughs].

The designing women had the 5-foot-long oval dining table custom-made to fit this space. “We needed a small dining table because it’s just squeaked in between the entrance and the kitchen,” Mally says. Open shelving built into the wall serves as both a curio case and room divider.

Q: It really does feel warm—especially with the fireplace.

Gabriella: The building was created by a developer called Bing & Bing in 1931, and they had a very humanist approach. It was after the first World War, and they were like, ‘We think everyone should have a proper dining area and a fireplace and lovely big windows.’ They really wanted to get back to making a home—even in the shifting landscape of an urban environment. That is something so timeless and arguably more valuable now as these big, cold, angular buildings keep getting erected that you can’t put enough antiques in to save your life.

Q: Making things fit your own definition of cozy is important. Speaking of, I want to take a nap in your reading nook.

Mally: Gabriella invented the nook. She’s a reader and wanted to be able to see her books, and we discovered there was this hidey-hole behind a horrible entertainment center at the end of the room.

Gabriella: It was this super-mid-’90s TV console that looked shallow, but I thought that even if there’s only room for my books, I want to have beautiful built-in bookshelves. We lucked out because the space actually goes quite deep, and it is, as my mom said, the perfect spot. 

Built-in bookshelves and Farrow & Ball Red Earth paint enhance the ultimate reading spot. Using high-gloss paint for the nook separates it a notch from the rest of the room. 

Q: The antiques everywhere are great too. It feels so homey. How do you hone your eye and develop a distinctive style?

Mally: If you see something you really love, buy it. You can figure out where you’re going to put it later on. If you wait then go back, someone else will have bought it.

Gabriella: One of the biggest lessons I learned working with my mom as a designer was to trust myself. She would say, ‘You love it; let’s do it. You’re going to kick yourself if we don’t get it.’ And for so many of those pieces where I said, ‘Well, it’s kind of loud or ‘It’s a little crazy,’ she gave me that boost of encouragement—and those are the pieces I love the most. You have to listen to your gut. Too many people have expectations for themselves about what their personal style is going to look like, but if you love things, you won’t get sick of them.

Before Gabriella moved in, the bathroom had not been touched since 1931. “Even as a devout antiquarian, I thought, OK, I’m going to need to update this!” she says. She used white subway tile and Ferrick Mason wallpaper; this pattern was painted by hand then printed.

The mirrored vanity is a mood booster. “It felt very Marie Antoinette—the idea of being surrounded by mirrors as you dab your cold cream onto your cheekbones,” Gabriella says. “It all feels extravagant in the best possible way.”

“I wanted my office to feel brooding and moody, like an old bank,” Gabriella says. The winning color is Farrow & Ball Calke Green. A wicker daybed from Serena & Lily brings a fanciful note and provides a peaceful perch for naps. (Perk: It holds a twin-size mattress.) Tole candleholders transform a wall above an understated headboard.

• Styled by Lili Diallo
• Produced by Monika Eyers