NCS
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There are a number of constants that the Internet is aware of about Lenny Kravitz’s way of life. Photos of him carrying an unlimited brown blanket scarf, which resurface annually, have turn into a dependable indicator of the approaching winter. And he’s by no means removed from a pair of leather-based pants, which the 60-year-old American musician proved final yr when he posted a video to TikTok bench urgent whereas doing sit-ups on the gymnasium in black leather-based, a sheer mesh tank and sun shades. (“This isn’t how everyone’s dad works out?” his daughter, the actor Zoë Kravitz, requested “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon in response to the video).
But through the years, the rock star has additionally supplied a window into his life by means of his houses, from the idyllic Brazilian ranch that Architectural Digest (AD) toured in 2019, to the beachside Airstream trailer he occupies for a part of the yr within the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. For AD’s “Star Power” issue, printed in the present day, Kravitz is exhibiting off the grand Paris townhouse he has had for 20 years and was the earlier palatial house of a countess.
Kravitz was shocked by the large house when he first noticed it, situated within the sixteenth arrondissement, the French capital’s house to embassies, museums and luxurious procuring. In the early 2000s, he had already launched a number of Platinum albums, however had in thoughts one thing extra modest: “a little apartment, maybe on the Seine — one bedroom, two bedrooms, maximum — where I could write and hang out,” he recalled to AD.
It was his actual property agent who inspired him to see the “once-in-a-generation” itemizing, he added. When he arrived, he thought maybe he was touring a single flooring, not your entire property.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, no, absolutely not.’” Inside although, his emotions modified. “I walked in and said, ‘This is my house.’ Spiritually, I knew.”
Years later, the house feels undeniably his — “a true reflection of his personality and creative energy,” famous Marina Hemonet, head of editorial content material for AD France, in an e mail to NCS.
From the ethereal interiors outfitted with work by blue-chip artists, conventional African artwork and a few of his personal studio’s furnishings designs — Kravitz Design was included within the prestigious AD100 record in 2023 — to the eccentric wine room and red-lit subterranean get together house he calls “The Chaufferie,” the musician has continued to remodel the house as an extension of himself. (Though he’s not the one Kravitz to benefit from the house, as Zoë has “been having a lot of soirées” within the speakeasy-esque boiler room, he instructed AD.)
“The things he surrounds himself with — (Andy) Warhol masterpieces, African artifacts, major music memorabilia, and rare furnishings by Paul Evans, Karl Springer, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Joe Colombo, and others — offer an astounding feast of the dreamily recherché,” AD’s international editorial director, Amy Astley, who leads AD U.S., wrote within the subject’s editor’s letter.
Kravitz’s sensibility displays his upbringing, he famous to the journal. He usually moved between his mother and father’ Upper East Side condominium in Manhattan — his mom, Roxie Roker, was an actor finest recognized for “The Jeffersons;” his father, Sy Kravitz, was a TV producer for NBC — to his grandparents’ house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
“Two completely different worlds,” he stated.
He calls his aesthetic “soulful elegance,” which is “comfortable, clearly. But also chic,” he defined. “I love that balance of African, European, and Afrofuturism mixed with midcentury pieces. I love things that are extremely glamorous and also extremely brutal.”
And although artworks by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Avedon dangle on his partitions, it’s a portrait by the photographer Ruven Afanador of Kravitz’s late grandfather, Albert Roker, that he considers a centerpiece of his house. Afanador photographed the quilt for the musician’s fourth album, “Circus,” launched in 1995, and his grandfather attended the shoot.
“I put my grandfather in one of my suits, and Ruven took a bunch of portraits of him. He is why I am here, and why I’m in this house, why my mom went to Howard University in DC and studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and became who she became, then I became who I became, and Zoë became who she became,” Kravitz stated. “It’s all him. So he presides over the table at all times.”