Local cosmetics maven personalizes a condo makeover

by Marni Elyse Katz | April 03, 2009

For Emily Kumler, it’s all about the personal touch. The 31-year-old co-owner of Prep Cosmetics (www.shopprep.com) bought this Inman Square condo from her sister and brother-in-law when they moved to Chicago in 2007. After lots of back and forth with her mom on design ideas and six months of construction, Emily and her teacup Yorkie, Rocky, moved in last year. The 2000-square-foot space perfectly reflects Emily’s fab personality and interests, which are an edgy mix of Martha Stewart meets Christiane Amanpour. She designed all the rooms herself, choosing not simply pieces that she loves, but ones that document both her childhood memories and travels as a girl on the go.

Home Cooking
Emily’s sleek and shiny kitchen is hardly the sort you’d expect to find in a walk-up in such a funky neighborhood. Some might think her crazy, or at least impractical for spending what she surely can’t recoup, but Emily loves to cook and entertain. From the exquisite steak salad and to-die-for lemon cupcakes she sets out for us, we can tell the investment was well worth it. Friends might find her whipping up “veal birds,” a specialty straight from grandma (“Yeah, the name sounds gross, but they’re delish — so many flavors,” she says), or a Middle Eastern lamb dish made with coriander, rose water, and molasses. “Really? Rose water?” we ask, skeptical that this vibrant “it” girl harbors such esoteric ingredients in her Cambridge kitchen. Sure enough, she pulls out a bottle and gives us a whiff. Luckily, her custom cabinets have enough storage for such stuff, plus her quirky collections, like the Starbucks mugs from far-flung locales, including Amalfi and Dubai. As for the handmade Italian tiles, she searched far and wide, but once she saw these, she knew they were perfetto and placed the order on the spot. She says, “My mom thought I was so impulsive; she jokes that she can’t believe it came out so well.” Any misses? “I love the look of the Sub-Zero fridge with the glass doors, but I have no place to put condiments!”

Roman Holiday
Emily’s bedroom is an ode to her former dorm room in Rome, where she studied during her junior year at
Cambridge’s Buckingham Browne & Nichols. “It was an old monastery with these huge windows and no
screens, just big shutters. I used to sit in my window and read all the time.” She found these shutters at an antique store in Somerville, and they fit perfectly. Plus, she loved the combination of the blue with the orange walls, which have a crackled texture for a Tuscan effect. Her sister couldn’t believe she was going to live with such a hell-fire color, but Emily, true to her determined nature, persisted. “I love that in Italy, people aren’t scared to put bold colors next to each other,” she says. When she visited again last May, she saw a building with the same color combination and was thrilled that she had managed to channel Italia in the depths of Cambridge. “Rome is definitely my favorite city,” she declares.

Like Mother, Like Daughter
The design of the living room (and the whole condo really) is Kumler’s own take on her mother’s taste. “She taught me to study works of art that created a certain feeling, and then to translate those feelings into my own design,” she says. Kumler’s mom advised her to take a series of paintings that she enjoys looking at and copy the color combination. “I love the Fauve painters — Matisse and Derain as well as the inspiration they found in Gauguin and Cezanne.” Shades often used by such masters include bright oranges and greens, evident in Kumler’s living room, which screams color. Bright green walls, a burnt orange sofa, and hot pink accent pillows pop against the room’s mostly white interior. Another maternal influence? The colorful William Morris wallpaper that appears in three rooms in the apartment reminds the young entrepreneur of the walls of the house in which she grew up. Like a lot of Emily’s ideas and elements, the paper is European import, but for her, it’s absolutely home.