DESIGN by EDELWEISS FROMM
PHOTOGRAPHY by YULIA SMILYANETS
TEXT by LESLIE GARISTO PFAFF
Edelweiss Fromm has lived a colorful life. Born in Honduras, the stylist was living in Barcelona when she met her husband, Alex Brescia, in 2009.
Soon thereafter she moved with him to Monterrey, Mexico. The two share a love of art, food and travel, passions reflected throughout the Morristown home they bought in 2015, which Fromm has been joyfully decorating ever since. Unsurprisingly, the house—a center-hall colonial built in 1964 is as vibrant and colorful as its designer.
“I think of decorating as a kind of storytelling-nearly everything in the house has a story behind it,” she says.
That could be the gloriously oversized mirror she bought in Mexico for a future dining room large enough to accommodate it, or the dramatic window treatments in that same room made from the aisle runner that covered the church floor during her 2010 wedding, or any one of the many artworks collected during her travels. In the home’s formal living room, decorated mostly in neutral shades of white, gray and blue, the brightly hued art adds not just a pop of color but a virtual explosion.
And color defines the dining room, with its black wallpaper, dark-stained wood floors and astonishing pink ceiling. “I always knew I wanted a black dining room,” says Fromm. She faced some pushback from the gentleman who stained her floors, who was convinced that she was making a terrible mistake, especially given the black walls. But Fromm had a strong vision, and no one could talk her out of it.
The result is a striking black-and-white room, the white deriving from the dining table and chairs. (“I always say black-and-white is my favorite color,” quips Fromm.) Then, a few years later, she got the idea that the ceiling should be pink, and what resulted is a space that seems to enclose diners in a warm, slightly moody and slightly playful embrace. Like the rest of the house, it’s a very grownup space (the couple don’t have children) for grownups who haven’t ditched their youthful sense of fun.
Fromm has a passion for combining and layering color and pattern. In the kitchen, cabinets, countertops and trim are white, but the walls are painted a deep jade green; the floor tiles are dark gray; the front of the island is adorned with black-and-white patterned floor tiles; and chairs tucked around a small café table are upholstered in large black-and-white stripes. Fromm uses that small table as a desk during the work day, and she loves working in a room whose additional layer of color and texture derives from exterior plantings visible through the many windows and the large, sliding-glass door.
But perhaps the most striking room, in a house full of striking rooms, is the basement-level bar, which could just as easily be a speakeasy tucked away in a New York City brownstone or an intimate hotel bar in Barcelona or Paris. The space, completed this year, is a favorite not just of the homeowners but also of their guests. “People love hanging out at our house,” says Fromm, “especially since we finished our basement.” Previously, she says, any time the couple entertained, guests just ended up sitting around the kitchen island. But Fromm wanted a place that was built specifically for congregating with friends. And given her husband’s extensive wine collection and the couple’s fondness for mixology, a bar seemed like the ideal space.
Fromm was gathering ideas for the bar long before the couple started remodeling the basement. (They added a home gym and a large storage area as well.) “The inspiration for the bar,” she says, “is really a collection of all the bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies we’ve been in.” The black walls and floors and the cowhide rug were inspired by a bar they were taken to by friends on a visit to Monterrey. The overall dark, moody feel of the place found its inspiration in Barcelona’s Paradiso, named the best bar in the world in 2022 by the travel website World’s 50 Best.
As with the dining room, Fromm knew from the start that she wanted to paint the walls and ceiling black and, once again, workers doing the job were dubious. “The painter and the contractor looked at us like we were crazy-“What do you mean black?’ But when the room was painted, they said,
‘Ooh, we’re starting to see your vision.”” Black isn’t the dominant note, thanks to inspired touches of color, light and texture: a tufted, pink-velvet chair, a natural-edge wooden coffee table, tufted-leather barstools, lighted shelves backed with green-patterned wallpaper and-as in the rest of the house-art and collectibles everywhere. Shelves behind the bar are carefully curated with bottles that tell their own set of stories.
“Every bottle came from somewhere we went—a trip, a special restaurant—or was a gift from friends,” says Fromm.
“I tell our guests, ‘When you bring a bottle, it could end up on the shelves.'” One of their friends, she adds, is determined, in his words, “to own one of your shelves.”
If he does, his story—along with so many others in this storied home-will likely be told for years to come.