Their Home Had to Be Fashion Forward. But Above All Else, It Needed a Killer Closet.

If Kelli and Fei Wang’s house had a soul, it would be the walk-in closet.

The house, in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighbourhood, is designed around the couple’s love for fashion and includes a 300-square-foot custom closet, with charcoal-suede wall covering and cerused-oak shelves, amplified by a vanity within a 40 x 60 inch mirror. There is a separate accessories side room, modelled after a showroom, where Kelli’s collection of designer bags and shoes sit on shelves and where she hangs out on a silver love seat.

In the couple’s previous home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, they had to change out their wardrobes every season, hauling clothes from their apartment to their storage unit in the building’s basement, because there wasn’t room for it all upstairs.

“I wanted to never do a closet swap again,” says Kelli, 42, dressed in a floaty, cream-coloured shirt dress from Sandro Paris and light pink Manolo Blahnik pumps. “The closet was the first thing I thought about for the house.”

The Wangs bought their Ukrainian Village property for $511,000 in 2016 and tore down the existing 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, old brick home on it. The new house, finished in 2021, is 5,000 square feet, has three bedrooms and cost $1.8 million, with about $100,000 of millwork, carpet and furnishings going into the primary closet alone.

To design the house, the couple hired Dan Mazzarini, the principal of New York-based BHDM Design, who was a director of store design at Ralph Lauren for six years and also worked on Michael Kors, Calvin Klein and Kate Spade retail spaces.

Mazzarini knew Kelli from college, and understood the couple’s love for fashion: they’d shopped together many times in New York, where Fei had a special affinity for the Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue.

“I wanted to live in the Ralph Lauren store,” says Fei, 46, dressed in a custom-made Pini Parma shirt and a Boggi sweater. “It makes you feel elegant, elevated, and classy.”

As a guide for the house’s overall aesthetic, they decided on “Ralph Lauren meets Tom Ford, a mixture of buttoned up and timeless sophistication and sexy, modern, crisp elegance,” says Mazzarini. That meant a lot of black, white and charcoal.

That mixture can be seen throughout the house. In the living room, open from the kitchen on the main floor, a Ralph Lauren influence can be seen in the classic white sofa, while the angles of the coffee table and the chairs are more Tom Ford, says Mazzarini.

Tom Ford comes out in the kitchen, where the black granite counters, black-matte open shelves and stainless-steel appliances have a “refined industrialism,” says Mazzarini. The dining room has a crafty Ralph Lauren chandelier and white leather chairs.

On the second floor, Fei’s office is “menswear-oriented” It has a modern, crisp, geometric style, with a glass coffee table, an oversize black linen sofa, and dark grey flannel curtains, like a suit, says Mazzarini. The red fox fur and brown velvet pillows, the rosewood desk and the nubby rug add more classic textures.

The primary suite, with its bathroom and the centrepiece closet, takes up the entire third floor. It is designed in part after the Bulgari Hotel Milano, where the couple stayed on one of their first trips to Italy. The furnishings include grey-velvet drapes, an ebony headboard, a leather bench and a large brown-velvet armchair.

When designing the closet, Mazzarini says he asked the couple how many suits, shoes, bags and accessories they had—and that number kept growing as the home-building process progressed, going from around 50 to more than 100 pairs of shoes for each. While the overarching goal was beauty and style, it also had to be comfortable—and to reflect what Mazzarini calls the couple’s “Midwestern warmth and hospitality.”

Fei was born in Shanghai and grew up in Chicago, where his father was getting a Ph.D. in chemistry. Living on a teacher assistant’s budget didn’t leave much for buying designer clothes, but Fei says he “always had an eye for fashion—it was innate.” He says his parents, who grew up when many Chinese people wore blue worker’s suits, weren’t interested in subsidising his passion, so he started working in a clothing store when he was 14 years old. The first suit he bought himself was from Banana Republic.

He graduated from Illinois State University in 1999 and then from the University of Chicago with an M.B.A. in 2004. He went to work in asset management at Morgan Stanley, then to J.P. Morgan Asset Management and UBS before landing again at Morgan Stanley in 2021, where he is now a senior vice president in family wealth management.

Kelli also remembers a passion for fashion from a young age. Growing up in Piqua, Ohio, north of Dayton, she couldn’t afford to buy designer clothes, so she mixed and matched, she says. She graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and went to work at J.P. Morgan Asset Management before moving on to Merrill Lynch and Centric Wealth Management in 2018, where she is currently director of financial planning.

Fashion is central to the couple’s relationship. When they first met in 2008, when they were both working in J.P. Morgan’s wealth management unit in Chicago, each noticed the other’s clothes. “She was chic and classy,” says Fei. “I pay attention to style.” Kelli remembers the first time she saw her now-husband walk by in a suit. “He looked the Wall Street-financier part,” she says.

After their wedding in Lake Como, Italy, the couple honeymooned at JK Place (now called The Place), in Florence, a hotel that also influenced the design of their home. They started traveling to Italy and France every year because they love traveling and shopping together, and they both appreciate the goal of having the best experience possible, whether it is food, art, clothing or design. “The downside of that is there’s no voice of reason,” jokes Fei.

The Wangs say they have passed their fashion appreciation on to their 2½-year-old daughter, Gemma, who loves to hang out in the accessory room of the closet, where she tries on her mum’s shoes. In Gemma’s own bedroom, a shelf is filled with miniature designer bags: Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton. “She has a better sense of style than both of us,” says Kelli.

The most convincing luxury interiors rarely need to announce their value.

Their appeal is revealed more gradually: in the weight of a door, the texture of a natural material, the proportion of the furniture or the way lighting changes the mood of a room after dark.

It is this quieter expression of luxury that has shaped the work of Charlie Rizk, founder and design director of Sydney studio Edge Design Consultants.

Established in 2006, the boutique practice works across residential and commercial interiors, offering services that range from architectural interior design and material selection to bespoke furniture, furnishing and final styling.

Its portfolio spans family homes, waterfront retreats, commercial workplaces and apartments within some of Sydney’s most prominent residential buildings. But according to the studio’s philosophy, the common thread is not a readily identifiable aesthetic.

Instead, it is an emphasis on longevity, personalisation and a close relationship between designer and client.

From the salon to the design studio

Rizk’s route into interior design was unconventional.

Before establishing Edge Design Consultants, he founded the Sydney hair salon Escapadehfb. While the two businesses operate in different creative fields, Rizk’s early career gave him experience in interpreting highly personal client briefs.

That ability to listen — and to distinguish between what a client initially requests and how they ultimately want to feel — became central to his work in interiors.

A client may arrive with a collection of reference images, favourite colours or individual pieces of furniture. The designer’s role is not simply to assemble those elements. It is to identify the underlying preference connecting them and translate it into a coherent environment.

That distinction becomes particularly important in bespoke residential design, where the success of a room is determined by more than its appearance in photographs.

The interior must accommodate routines, collections, entertaining, children, pets, privacy and storage. Materials must also be selected according to how they will perform after years of use.

A deliberately boutique model

Edge Design Consultants has remained a relatively small studio, allowing Rizk to maintain personal involvement across its projects.

For clients, that structure offers continuity. Architectural detailing, fixtures, finishes, furniture and styling can be developed as parts of the same design narrative rather than commissioned as disconnected stages.

The studio’s full-service model can begin with spatial planning and architectural interiors before progressing through mood boards, material selections, custom furniture and the final installation.

This continuity is particularly valuable on complex homes involving architects, builders, specialist trades, suppliers and landscape designers. Decisions made at the beginning of a project can affect everything that follows, from the dimensions of a custom sofa to the placement of lighting, power and joinery.

Bringing the interior designer into the process early can help prevent decorative decisions from being imposed on a largely completed building.

It also creates opportunities for furniture, art and objects to inform the architecture itself.

The case against a signature look

Many successful designers become associated with a recognisable palette or recurring visual device. Edge takes a less prescriptive position.

The studio’s work includes warm, layered family interiors as well as more restrained contemporary apartments and sharper commercial spaces. Its stated priorities are durability, considered materials and an understanding of the way each space will be occupied.

This does not mean abandoning a point of view. Rather, the designer’s sensibility is expressed through proportion, editing and consistency instead of a formula repeated from one project to another.

For affluent homeowners, this can be an important distinction. A heavily trend-driven interior may look current when completed but quickly reveal the moment in which it was designed.

An enduring home needs enough character to feel individual without becoming hostage to a short-lived fashion.

Natural stone, timber, metalwork and well-made furniture can provide that foundation, but material expense alone does not create permanence. The detailing, installation and relationship between the materials matter just as much.

Designing from the building out

Edge’s published portfolio includes residential projects in Pymble, Epping, North Rocks, Strathfield, Pyrmont and Wagstaffe, along with the furnishing and styling of a residence in Crown Sydney. A Pymble residence (below) was featured on Channel Nine’s Australia’s Best House in 2023.

The scope varies between projects.

Some commissions involve complete architectural interior design, furniture and styling. Others focus on furnishing an existing residence, where the challenge is to introduce identity without altering the underlying architecture.

A penthouse, for example, may already possess exceptional views, finishes and proportions. The designer’s task is then to create intimacy, establish visual rhythm and ensure the furniture remains appropriately scaled to the volume of the rooms.

A freestanding family home presents different considerations. Storage, circulation, durability and the relationship between indoor and outdoor areas may take precedence over creating a formal sense of arrival.

The best result is not necessarily the most dramatic. It is the one in which the architecture, finishes, furniture and objects feel as though they were always intended to coexist.

Luxury as a personal experience

After 20 years, Edge Design Consultants sits within a design market transformed by social media and unprecedented access to international references.

Clients can now identify furniture, stone, lighting and interiors from around the world before their first conversation with a designer. That access can broaden a brief, but it can also produce an overwhelming collection of competing ideas.

The designer’s role is increasingly one of curation: deciding what belongs, what should be removed and which references can be translated convincingly into an Australian home.

For Rizk, the boutique scale of Edge allows that process to remain personal.

The studio’s version of luxury is therefore not defined by a single material, brand or visual signature. It lies in the time spent understanding a client, the care with which each element is selected and the sense that the completed space belongs specifically to the people living within it.

Fact box

Designer: Charlie Rizk
Role: Founder and design director
Studio: Edge Design Consultants
Established: 2006
Location: Sydney, NSW
Services: Architectural interior design, spatial planning, mood boards, fixtures and finishes, bespoke furniture, furnishing and styling
Project types: Luxury residences, apartments, penthouses and boutique commercial interiors
Selected locations: Pymble, Epping, North Rocks, Strathfield, Pyrmont, Wagstaffe, Macquarie Park and Crown Sydney
Selected media: Australia’s Best House, Kanebridge Quarterly and Robb Report Australia
Website: edgedesignconsultants.com.au
Instagram: @edge_design_consultants