Weird & Wonderful: Lily Allen’s house tour has left us too stunned to speak

Do you know what’s *really* Not Fair, Lily? The fact that we can’t all live in this stunningly chic Brooklyn townhouse.

Somehow managing to straddle kitsch and elegance, remaining vibrantly maximalist without verging on overwhelmingly excessive, this Architectural Digest celebrity house tour might just be the best one yet.

Appearing in AD’s Star Power issue, singer-songwriter extraordinaire Lily Allen and her husband David Harbour of Stranger Things fame opened up the doors of their Brooklyn home, thoroughly disproving the lyrics of her 2006 smash hit LDN. When Lily Allen said, “sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why would I wanna be anywhere else?”, she obviously hadn’t moved into her Brooklyn townhouse yet.

The pair — whose Vegas wedding and In-N-Out burger reception had the internet in a chokehold back in 2020 — created their family oasis with AD100 designer Billy Cotton and architect Ben Bischoff of MADE that AD described as “a familial fantasyland of daring beauty and individual connoisseurial vision”.

A woman known for her bold lyrics, loveable eccentricities and unapologetic nature, it comes as no surprise that Lily Allen’s home would be a mish-mash of colours, patterns, and an abundance of finery collected over time.

The bones of the property are a late-19th century Italianate brownstone in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood. After a lengthy process of peeling back the well-lived-in, highly renovated interiors, they found a surprising amount of original moldings and doors that thoroughly pleased the architects.

Setting about preserving the character of the space while making it entirely their own, they chose to embrace the atypical layout of the property and lean into extravagance in every meaning of the word. Yes, we’re talking about the bath-cum sitting room on the second floor, complete with a wall-to-wall floral carpet, Louis XVI–style sink stands, and sculptural freestanding tub.

Speaking on being pulled back throughout the process by designer Cotton, Allen says, “Billy would say, ‘You know this is a little crazy,’ or he’d bring up resale value. But this is our home, and we want to live in it in a way that works for us.”

According to AD, the media room on the lower level had little original detailing, and so crisp, contemporary interior architecture took its place. By way of decor, sexy-glam reigns supreme and floral motifs are present in abundance. “Upstairs, the look is grand hotel meets grande dame. Downstairs, it’s a little Madeleine Castaing on cocaine … It’s all really a reflection of Lily,” Cotton says. “She has such presence and star quality, you just can’t picture her living somewhere boring and conventional.”

From the tiger patterned carpet and sofa to the eternally chic bureau that every remote worker would simply die for, this home oozes exuberance, and is an amalgamation of styles and influence that manage to live in perfect harmony.

Check out the full tour on ‘Architectural Digest’, or browse through our gallery below…

Photography by Simon Watson of Architectural Digest.

This article was originally published in February 2023.