Writer and podcast host
Marjon Carlos thought she had finished decorating her Brooklyn apartment. Then a surprise roommate moved in.
STAY
WHILE
SIT,
Words by Julie Vadnal
Photography by Belle Morizio
Styled by Kate Berry
Words by Julie Vadnal
Photography by Belle Morizio
Styled by Kate Berry + Julia Stevens
For someone as deep thinking as Carlos, it wasn’t just the high ceilings and hidden storage that attracted her to the 617-square-foot unit. The building has a rich history—it was once a Catholic school. “I’ve always lived in a brownstone, so this was the first time I’ve ever lived in a big building,” she admits. “But I liked the original architecture, and when I meet people on the block, they tell me they’ve seen all the iterations of it. I met one woman who even went to the school [back in the 1950s or ’60s]. It’s not just a block in the sky.”
Plus it was in her dream part of town: “Bedford-Stuyvesant always felt like home,” she says. “It’s a historically Black neighborhood, and I wanted to preserve that, especially as gentrification is coming in swiftly and aggressively.”
With her closetful of Christopher John Rogers dresses (the designer is a friend) and bookshelves packed with everything from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novels to Phaidon’s The Rihanna Book, she was finally living a life she’d always imagined.
Then…record scratch.
![For someone as deep-thinking as Carlos, it wasn’t just the high ceilings, wood flooring, hidden storage, and the building’s rich history—it was once a Catholic School—that attracted her to the 617-square foot unit. “I’ve always lived in a brownstone, so this was the first time I’ve ever lived in a big building,” she says. “But I liked the original architecture, and when I meet people on the block, they tell me they’ve seen all the iterations of it. I met one woman who even went to the school [back in the 19TKs]. It’s not just a block in the sky.”
Plus, it was in her dream neighborhood: “Bed Stuy always felt like home,” she says. “It’s a historically Black neighborhood, and I wanted to preserve that, especially as gentrification is coming in swifty and aggressively.”
And with her closet full of Christopher John Rogers dresses (the designer is a friend) and bookshelves packed with everything from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Phaidon’s The Rihanna Book, she was finally living a life she’d always imagined.
Then, record scratch.](null)
She covered the walls with her collection of Black art—her parents filled the Texas home she grew up in with Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Gordon Park prints—and, over that waterfall table, a blown-up photo of Precious Lee from a profile Carlos wrote for
i-D magazine. She splurged on a chocolate brown Ligne Roset
Togo sofa.
“It was very auntie,” says the former Vogue editor, who now writes celebrity profiles and essays on everything from aging to the power of fanny packs for various magazines and hosts an appropriately titled pop culture podcast, Your Favorite Auntie. “It was very well appointed for one woman. Plus it was really important for me to make this place a reflection of who I am at this point in my life.” She needed a stylish and restorative landing pad for developing her ideas and dreaming up new ones.
The kitchen provides hidden storage and just enough room for one (or two, if you count Oso). Below right: The facade of the building gives away its past life as a Catholic school. Below: Carlos’s dreamy sleeping space is clean but not pristine—and that’s by design.
When it comes to burl wood, more is more, so Carlos placed a credenza next to a secretary desk that folds down when it’s time to write and goes away when it’s time to play. Below: Oso makes himself at home in his Fable crate.
The marble table, a vintage find from Friends of Form, is just one of many previously loved pieces that Carlos snapped up during the pandemic. (Her other favorite shops? Junk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and The Break, now on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.)
Still, her bedroom is her reprieve, the place where she gets a brief break from puppy parenting while Oso is in his bedroom, ahem, crate. “My sheets are a little wrinkled, and I don’t really mind that. It makes it feel less pristine,” she says (they’re stonewashed cotton by Tekla x Jacquemus). It’s also filled with new storage for non-puppy things thanks to her boyfriend, who built a closet with materials from Home Depot for housing her impressive collection of Rogers’s colorful clothes.
Just one year into life with a non-rent-paying addition, Carlos still has no intention of leaving her apartment, even if she has to make a few more changes. Something she’s learned from reporting on the houses of fashion designers and directors is that the best homes are always evolving. “It took a long time to get to this point, but I still have, like, 1,000 things that I want to do with the space,” she says. As in, add more plants or even a tree in the bedroom. “I don’t know if decorating is ever finished.”
“I remember the first night he came home, I let him loose and he peed on the floor,” Carlos says with a laugh. “I was like, Oh, it’s on.” (If you’re wondering, Oso on the Togo is a no-go.) When her dog trainer told her she needed to get rid of her dining room table to make room for a crate, she resisted. “He was like, ‘You really need to move this table, and I was like, ‘You really need to not tell me that,’” she recalls. Ultimately, though, she realized it would be best for her new pup, and her coffee table is a fine substitution as a dining table. Plus she thought, doggie domiciles aren’t what they used to be, and she was able to find a bentwood one from Fable that fit into the aesthetic world she had already begun creating within her four walls. The sleek top can even act as a mini side table.
Thankfully, other aspects were totally fine for life with Oso, including the sleek burl-wood secretary desk that folds down when it’s time to write (and goes away when it’s time to play) and the kitchen, which she admits is really a place to store his snacks because she’s never been much of a cook. As long as she limits her social outings—which, for someone who admits she can be “super-introverted,” is all right with her—and gives her pup some of his own furniture, like the mini bouclé sofa she recently purchased, coexisting is surprisingly effortless.
A little more than a year later, on her 39th birthday, Carlos’s boyfriend presented her with a box. A box large enough to fit a French bulldog. It was a French bulldog. (Yes, it was a total surprise; no, she didn’t ask for a dog; and yes, she and her boyfriend are still together.) She called him Oso, as in “Oh so sweet!” or “Oh so funny!” But the name also means “bear” in Spanish, fitting for his now “beefcake” status, she says. She immediately fell for him, but the thing is, she hadn’t been expecting a pet—or a roommate.
A
In December 2020, writer Marjon Carlos was settling into her new apartment just fine. It was her first time living alone, and as one who’s newly unmoored by roommates often does, she began to decorate with a couple of all-her purchases that she snagged from cool-girl vintage shop Friends of Form: a waterfall console table that gave her Golden Girls vibes, a terraced marble coffee table.
Floating Bookshelves, Home Depot; Strato Boucle Armless Chair and Anders Copper Area Rug, CB2; Vintage Coffee Table, Friends of Form; Vintage Sofa, Home Union; Vintage Cabinet, Adaptations; Vintage Pedestal, Floor Lamp, and Table Lamp, Dobbin Street Vintage Co-op; Vintage Magazine Rack, Kartell.
Crate, Fable; Console, Friends of Form; Dog Bowls; Mackenzie-Childs.
Colette Hand-Knotted Area Rug, CB2; Vintage Table Lamp, The Break; Bud Vase, Yowie.
Classic Magazine Rack by Kartell
2Modern ($235)
Strato Boucle
Armless Chair
CB2 ($999)
Crate
Fable ($395)
Postmodern Mirrored Rectangular Pedestal
1stDibs ($495)
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