How a Furniture Designer Decorated Her First New York City Apartment

By her own admission, Leah Cumming has always been “New York curious.” The only problem? Her life felt entirely rooted in Los Angeles. Cumming had been residing there since her early 20s, when she landed a job at the design firm Nicky Kehoe. That led to stints at Soho Home and Jenni Kayne Home, which eventually prompted Cumming to launch her made-in-California furniture line, Maison Madeleine. How could she leave the state that inspired the very essence of her style?

Yet this fall—after the realization that a large portion of Maison Madeleine’s customers were New York-based—she decided to take the Pacific-to-Atlantic plunge. “I’m single, young, and had nothing really tying me down in Los Angeles,” she says. “So I decided to do it.” On a sweltering day in August, she saw over 12 apartments in 24 hours. Then, she signed the lease on one.

Furniture designer Leah Cumming at home in New York—her first apartment in the city after moving from Los Angeles.

Photo: Michael Clifford

Cumming’s new apartment is in the London Terrace Towers, a Chelsea apartment building that’s long attracted a creative set: previous tenants have included Annie Leibovitz, Joan Didion, Malcolm Gladwell, Debbie Harry, to name just a few. (Cumming even acquired her apartment from famed event planner and author of Born to Party, Forced to Work, Bronson van Wyck.)

Its selling point—a large living room—was also the biggest challenge. “When you have a room of that scale, it’s difficult to make it feel warm and cozy and comfortable,” she says. So she looked at Art Deco parlors for inspiration. “You have different pockets and seating areas,” Cumming says she observed while studying vintage photos. “So I kind of tried to create different moments throughout the room—a daybed where people could sit and lounge, a spot where people could play a game of chess.”

Cumming’s next issue? All of her self-designed furniture had been created with beachy, airy Los Angeles living in mind. To help it fit a more East Coast mindset, she interwove those pieces with vintage finds she slowly but surely collectsed. In the living room sit two 1950s chairs, found at 200 Lex, while on a table elsewhere you’ll find an art piece of framed collars. “They come from an old men’s tailor,” says Cumming. “They give me a little bit of a Magritte vibe.”

Overall, Cumming did put a focus on sourcing moodier art: in her entrance hallway hangs several black-and-white prints of New York City. (She’s currently on the hunt for an illustration of her favorite moment in New York history—when elephants crossed the recently-opened Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 to assure the public it was safe to do so.) Cumming jokes that the choice has affected her style as well: “It even boils down to clothing. I've never put on anything black in my life until living here—in LA, I was strictly white linen.”

Now that she’s settled into her own designs in a different city, Cumming says she’s looking at them in a new light. “At first, I could never imagine them in a contemporary kind of city apartment,’” she says. “Now that I see them in this context, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is very cool. It just shows the versatility of the product.” Which is only set to continue: Maison Madeleine’s newest collectsion, says Cumming, is inspired by city living.