By Design: Roman and Williams

From film sets and furniture to paint and pop-up shops, there’s no end to the work of this interior designer duo with their glittering portfolio of hotels, homes and restaurants

Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer

Photo: Sebastian Kim

This year the design firm Roman and Williams is 20-years-old, with a phenomenal back catalogue of greatest hits to show for its two decades. In 2009, for example, its founders – Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch – created a hotel where you could work, in the Ace in New York. “It was groundbreaking back then,” says Standefer. “No one else was doing that yet.” They are responsible for the Standard High Line Hotel – venerated in Steve McQueen’s outstanding movie Shame. They completely reconfigured the British Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2020, bringing low-lit luxury and groundbreaking presentation to the business of displaying historical decorative arts.

They have created a paint range for Farrow & Ball, cafes for Facebook, pop-up shops for Goop, and offices for HuffPost. Readers might well know Le Coucou, the haut de gamme restaurant in Aby Rosen’s 11 Howard hotel, with its hand-painted murals of romantic landscapes. This fall, their thorough reworking of the old Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan reopens as a 53,000sq ft food destination of restaurants, cafes and groceries overseen by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. “It’s now called the Tin Building,” says Standefer, promising that “it will delight and engage every one of the five senses”.

FOR A HOME OR A HOTEL, WE AIM TO CONNECT OBJECTS TO THE PERSONALITY

Their story goes back much further, however. The pair met working as set designers in Hollywood in the 1990s, and having worked on many movies – Practical Magic and Zoolander among them – they became the go-to couple for A-listers on the search for their own interior designers. Ben Stiller, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow… the list goes on. “In a film,” says Standefer, “we would pick a car or a coffee table specifically for how it brings the character to life. For a home or a hotel, we similarly aim to connect the objects to the personality, or the community, being served.” They prefer the word “found” to “vintage” when it comes to the plethora of items they are able to weave together to create multi-layered but coherent environments.

Also this autumn, their first new range of Roman and Williams furniture in five years (the name, by the way, comes from their respective grandparents) will be on offer at their own RW Guild space in New York’s SoHo.

The original series made much use of hardwoods and leathers that improve over time. “We’ve always honoured the handmade, and we’ve definitely seen an increased appetite for this quality in interiors,” says Standefer. A clue to their evolution, and mission statement combined.

The Top of the Standard, also known as the Boom Boom Room, New York. Adrian Gaut