It may only be 10 a.m., but Alison Brod is already in a black minidress and heels as she makes a fruit smoothie in her kitchen.
As she blends, Brod is talking with her charismatic new boyfriend Edward “Woody” Maher — a Boston-based vice chairman of capital markets at real estate firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
The social couple has been dating for a year and a half (Maher lives with Brod part-time, as he has full custody of his three teenagers in Boston); they had hit the party circuit the week I visited Brod’s newly renovated Fifth Avenue abode.
Until recently, Brod was married for 20 years to investment manager Andy, whom she met when she was 21. (The couple shares custody of sons Spencer, 10, and Austin, 8. Andy lives in an apartment nearby.)
“I wanted a total change,” says Brod, who originally moved into the four-bedroom home on the Upper East Side a decade ago. “And I wanted to create a nice place for Woody to spend half his time.”
Brod — a PR exec who represents brands like Mercedes-Benz, L’Oreal, Draper James (Reese Witherspoon’s Southern lifestyle brand) and Burger King — is known for her pink-themed Barbie-style office, which was featured on an episode of “The City,” a reality show with Whitney Port.
Her eponymous public relations firms now boasts a new, more demure space on Park Avenue South, but her framed vintage Pucci scarves (pink, of course) have made the move.
At home, the goal of a six-month-long overhaul was to make every space work for her entire family, and to make the most of every room. She wanted something “not too precious” that would be enjoyed by all but also reflect her personal style.
The first order of business was to select a new signature color. “I picked turquoise as an accent color throughout the apartment, because I wanted something fun and energetic that I hadn’t used before — and I’ve done a total of seven home and office renovations,” Brod explains.
For this makeover, Brod worked with Abigail Shachat, principal of AJS Designs, who’s been decorating sleek NYC lofts and cozy Hamptons abodes for 20 years.
Brod herself has a strong sense of style and is used to running things, so she needed to hire a designer who would allow her to be involved. “I didn’t want anyone with their own set signature style,” says Brod.
“But I don’t have a good sense of adapting a room for my lifestyle, so I needed Abby.” Her pick worked. Shachat was “able to see things in a new way and use the space wisely,” she says, noting she turned her son’s unused closet into a wet bar in the living room.
Perhaps even more important than a cocktail, however, was transforming the master bedroom. The room is peaceful (a mattress from Casper, another client, helps) and cozy with its deep shag wall-to-wall carpeting by Stanton and beige color palette.
“I wanted the most neutral and serene space,” says Brod. A Maya Romanoff wall covering adorns the room — accented by gold ball Frizzante lamps from Phillips Collection, mirrored Worlds Away bedside tables and lamps that flank the Apropos bed.
Another need was a storage overhaul. “Alison’s closet space was seriously lacking,” explains Shachat, who combined two closets into one walk-in. “I wanted her to be able to see what she had and make putting together an outfit just a little bit easier.”
There’s now an accessories closet with an impressive selection of shoes and bags (nine pairs of Walter Steiger stilettos, 14 pairs of YSL Tribute sandals — you get the idea). “You don’t find a lot of diversity in my closet,” Brod says.
Her décor, however, has a bit more variety. Her parents are antique dealers in South Florida specializing in 15th- and 16th-century furniture, which Brod admits isn’t her favorite: “I go more for Art Deco pieces.”
Her new dining room features an overdyed turquoise rug from ABC Carpet & Home, plush leopard-covered chairs and a glossy wood table purchased at a Parisian flea market. It’s lined with two screens her father designed for her.
But neither her dining room nor the apartment as a whole plays host to many social gatherings. “We do most of our dining out. We like to be at restaurants,” she says of favorite neighborhood spots like Le Bilboquet. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve had people over since my son’s bris ceremony.”
She entertains more out of her Paul Masi-designed Bridgehampton home, which has a woodburning oven and looks like an Aman hotel.
“But I wanted to be able to have people over in the city for drinks before dinner,” she says, and the new setup allows just that. “Previously the living room, which was arranged in a more traditional manner, was not used by anyone in her family,” Shachat says. “Now the room is a truly livable space.”
Austin’s renovated room includes a trendy touch: street art skateboards from the MoMA Store.
Yet the apartment’s new look is not all about play. Brod also “wanted a place to sit and be able to work on her laptop and do homework with her kids,” Shachat notes. “So we created this built-in banquette dining nook, which is made out of a Studio Four hippie-chic watercolor-print velvet fabric.”
There’s a large custom sectional sofa and an ottoman that also functions as a coffee table (with trays to help). The sectional faces a feature wall, lined in a Phillip Jeffries wall covering, that integrates a giant television and a custom bar. From there, accents of gold, brass and silver dress the space up without making it too formal.
One of the challenges of the living room was sufficient lighting. “We made up for this by creating a beam that allowed us to install two equally placed lights in the ceiling, and we washed the walls with wall-mounted lights by Modulightor,” explains Shachat.
Most of Brod’s art is hung in the living room, where there are two playful works, created by former employee Stephen Gautier, featuring gold-coated gummy bears glued to iconic pop culture logos.
(“Anyone who doesn’t like gummy bears is somewhat suspect,” says the woman who has bowls of Sugarfina candy all over her office.)
A fuchsia neon sculpture that Brod had fabricated, inspired by Tracey Emin, reads: “All I Ever Wanted Was Everything.” Brod’s personal mantra stands out in the turquoise-and-gold-accented room. Because, of course, she couldn’t resist adding a dash of her signature pink.