It’s been a busy fall for fashion super-stylist Law Roach. The season kicked off with a turn at the Venice Film Festival, then New York Fashion Week, followed by the Met Gala and Paris Fashion Week. Along the way, he’s been doing international press stops for the upcoming blockbusters Spiderman: No Way Home and Dune, both of which star Zendaya, one of the earliest clients to join his now robust roster of A-list celebrities.
All of this jet-setting is a far cry from the many months of pandemic lockdown that Roach spent, like many of us, working remotely from home. His Los Angeles abode is the first house he’s ever owned and designed, and the lockdown provided the ideal opportunity for the fashion maven to cultivate his taste and sensibility in the arena of interiors. “At first, I wanted the entire house to be gray: gray furniture, gray cabinetry, gray everything,” Roach recalls. “But being cooped up here, day in and day out, it just became depressing.”
So, the stylist decided to flip the script on his home decor from monochromatic subtlety to an eruption of color, pattern, highly textured materials, and lots of crazy-sexy-cool details. “I used the time to experiment. When I’m dressing someone, I always try to find a way to express their personality, and I wanted to do the same for my home,” he explains. “I’m a little crazy, so there’s a lot to look at. The house is very specific. You have to have a certain amount of imagination to really appreciate it.”
Specific, indeed. From the gold tile on the fireplace elevation to the fuchsia-tone palm-frond wallpaper on the staircase wall to the Schiaparelli-pink upholstery on the dining chairs, Roach’s flights of fancy speak to a singular creative mind unafraid of bold statements and vivid juxtapositions. Consider the dynamic media room installation—a kind of pop constructivist assemblage of hand-painted wood planks—which the stylist commissioned from Floyd Davis of the Chicago-based studio Artpentry. It may not be for the faint of heart, but in the context of Roach’s seductive lair, it’s a knockout.
“Honestly, I was a little nervous about this whole project,” Roach confesses. “I understand proportion when it comes to clothes, but figuring out scale as it applies to furniture and rooms is something else altogether. I had to learn on the job,” he adds.
Along with flexing his muscles in the design sphere, Roach used the lockdown to expand his ever evolving art collection, which focuses mainly on Black artists, both boldface names as well as up-and-coming talents. The collection encompasses signature works by Kehinde Wiley, Genesis Tramaine, and Simone Leigh, who recently made history as the first Black woman artist selected to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale. “I have to have an emotional connection to the artworks I live with, a connection to the narrative,” Roach insists, again stressing the correlation with his approach to fashion styling.
Surveying his delightfully idiosyncratic domain, Roach seems ready for a deeper dive into the world of decor: “I really enjoyed this process. There’s such a strong link between fashion and interiors, and I’d love to explore it even further. Maybe some kind of great collaboration with a Target or a Crate & Barrel. I work with all these couture brands, but it’s always been my dream to do something accessible to a much broader audience,” he says. And, if he does, Roach might need to set up an alternative to his current Instagram account, @luxurylaw—perhaps @lawforless. It certainly has a nice ring.
Written by Mayer Rus.
Photography by Phylicia J. L. Munn.
Styled by Law Roach and Lisa Rowe.
This article originally appeared on Architectural Digest US.