The ever-changing rooms of a Hong Kong apartment
Canadian creative director Alex Slavycz has a lot of ‘stuff’ – enough to furnish his evolving Ap Lei Chau home plus a new furniture business
See those two sofas in the living room? And the bench? The mirror? You might not the next time Alex Slavycz has his home photographed, as happens often because of his reputation for style.
The Canadian creative director can’t help himself when it comes to changing the look of his 1,580 sq ft rented apartment in Ap Lei Chau because, he says, “I can’t concentrate if things aren’t exactly the way I want them.”
And the perfect look is never static because, as a frequent traveller in tune with trends, Slavycz is inspired from all directions, leading him constantly to acquire items, shift furniture, redesign pieces and generally refurbish as the mood takes him.
“I tried four sofas before I landed on these two,” he says. “My friends always laugh at me because they’ll come over one week and my place looks like this, but when they visit a month later it’ll be completely different.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Slavycz is preparing to monetise his love of interior design by starting a furniture business called, appropriately, Dong Xi Gallery. “It stands for ‘east [dong]’, ‘west [xi]’, and also ‘stuff’,” he says. “I do have a lot of stuff.”
Slavycz, of Ecuadorean and Ukrainian heritage, also has what can simply be described as an eye for beauty. From fashion (modelling, styling) to his current job with an American cosmetics company, which brought him to Hong Kong from Shanghai almost three years ago, he has always relied on strong likes and dislikes for creating picture-perfect settings.