Be it via Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, or Rear Window, we all have our fantasy versions of New York City. For many design cognoscenti, their dreams took the shape of the late fashion designer Isabel and artist Ruben Toledo’s penthouse apartment, showcased in a 2006 New York magazine article and dubbed by a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission chairwoman as a “little Parnassus in the sky”—fitting, as Parnassus was the residence of the Greek muses.
Alfredo Paredes’s Midtown design studio (shown here and above left) is in the former penthouse loft of Isabel and Ruben Toledo.
Set atop Alfred Zucker’s late-19th-century Baudouine Building, the penthouse is now home to ELLE DECOR A-List interior designer Alfredo Paredes’s small but mighty studio. Paredes, who worked at Ralph Lauren before opening his eponymous firm in 2019, remembered the space fondly from seeing it in print. When he heard it was available, he knew he had to have it and moved there this past fall while still several months away from the end of his previous lease.
Paredes with a portrait of the couple.
Architecturally, Paredes changed nothing. What was once the Toledos’ sleeping area is now a “war room” for the studio’s designers, while Ruben’s main workspace is now a sitting area that showcases a few of Paredes’s own designs: a pink sofa and navy armchairs. The positive, creative spirit the Toledos imbued in the space lives on. “The most beautiful rooms are the ones that have been there forever,” Paredes says. We couldn’t agree more.
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
