In 2021, Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, among the most embellished power couples in sports, discovered themselves in pursuit of a brand-new type of decoration: the interior decoration of their very first home acquired together. For the previous WNBA guard and the ruling U.S. Women’s National Team champ, the winning idea originated from Rapinoe’s stylist, Karla Welch, who put her on to ELLE DECORATION A-List designer Mark Grattan.
Rapinoe moved humbly into Grattan’s Instagram DMs: “My fiancée and I just got a place in SoHo and need HALP!” The location in concern was a 1,650-square-foot, two-bedroom pied-à-terre with high ceilings, sweeping views onto the city, and a roof balcony to boot. “New York is a really special place to both of us,” Rapinoe says. “Sue is from here. It feels like the place where we fell in love—it feels like home in so many ways.” Grattan was charmed by the soccer star’s effusion of emojis. “I typically let people sweat a little bit,” he says. This time, he reacted the very same day.
In the living-room, the couch, which is upholstered in a linen by Dedar and leather by Milton Sokol, the mixed drink table, and the mirror are all custom-made by Mark Grattan. The carpet is by Hechizoo Textiles.
Grattan understood he’d require “HALP!” with the task, his very first domestic style commission outside his own Mexico City home. (That house, in a Luis Barragán–developed building, was on ELLE Decor’s April 2021 cover.) To that end, he induced friend and regular partner Chloe Pollack-Robbins, of Curious Yellow Design, to handle the job and keep things advancing on an undoubtedly compressed timeline. “I’m more of a storyteller,” Grattan says. “Chloe understands my glitches, my triggers, my mess. It was very easy to go into this with her.”
Rapinoe and Bird were taking a trip continuously throughout the procedure, mostly living at their home in Seattle. When they existed, they acknowledged the strong team effort at hand. “Athletes and artists aren’t that different,” Bird says. “There is a process. And you can’t skip steps, you just can’t.”
The most significant endeavor was the open-plan cooking area, which Pollack-Robbins, while trying to find utensils for takeout throughout a conference early on, discovered was missing out on practical drawers. By the time the Brazilian quartzite was set up—a variation called Crystal Tiffany utilized for the counter tops, backsplash, and a custom-made island—even the drawer pulls were bespoke.
A deep emerald declaration ceiling makes the living location feel naturally grand, like living under an incredible leaf. An lit up lilac, like the underside of a sunlit petal, was Grattan’s unanticipated option for the home’s transitional locations, the corridor to the personal quarters and the stairwell leading up to the roofing system. Rapinoe was at first cautious, however the combination, while tough to understand in theory, is gorgeous in execution. “I wanted to try a moment where it doesn’t work on paper,” Grattan says. “It works only in real life.”
The cooking area counter tops, backsplash, and custom-made island remain in Brazilian quartzite. The barstools are by Mario Bellini for Cassina, and the Rombini tiles in Glossy Brun are by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Mutina. The fittings are by Kohler.
The task likewise enabled the designer the space, both actually and figuratively, to test brand-new production approaches. He effectively made and set up a freestanding bent mirror behind the living-room’s custom-made sectional couch, a task he’d been trying for several years. He likewise drew in brand-new procedures from his deal with Solange Knowles’s imaginative company Saint Heron, teaming up with the artist Quincy Ellis of Brooklyn-based Fracture Studio to establish a resin product for the base of the triangular-glass-topped table, balanced out by an orange velour banquette with leather piping.
The minty monochrome main bed room functions wall-to-wall carpets of which the bespoke bed appears a piece, rendered in velour and chrome and worn a bedspread made from material residues of Grattan’s upholstered stool collection for the gallerist Cristina Grajales. Built-in nightstands and another circumstances of mirrored wall deal discreet performance and a sense of splendour at scale. The en suite restroom is a tranquil dual-showerhead sanctuary influenced by Grattan’s recent takes a trip in São Paulo, bound in aqua-tinted Sicis mosaic tiles with floor-to-ceiling aluminum tones dressing the windows.
In the main bed room, the bed, bed linen, nightstand, and mirror are custom-made. The carpet is by Fabrica, the oak armchair is from R & Company, and the walls are painted in Antique Jade by Benjamin Moore.
This house offers a homecoming for the couple in another essential method: Bird retired from the WNBA in 2022, and Rapinoe announced in July that this year’s Women’s World Cup would be her last. Grattan’s work sets the phase for this interesting brand-new chapter in their lives. “Whenever I think about retirement and the future, I think about our friends and family sitting on the couch, sharing joy with each other,” Rapinoe says.
Bird echoes the belief, nodding to their one nonnegotiable—to set up a tv in the living-room where they can collect and see live sports. For 2 of the world’s biggest professional athletes, Grattan was video game.
This story initially appeared in the September 2023 concern of ELLE DECORATION. SUBSCRIBE
