The Sofa: A Love Story

Now it can be told.

Previous Now It Can Be Tolds: Me and Roger Deakins … Elle Fanning Barefoot at LAX … This post was sponsored by Ellison Studios. US shoppers can find their Float Sofa at Design Within Reach.

Photo: Andrew Goble.

If you really want to know the truth, I found the sofa first and the apartment second. I’d lived in Williamsburg for over five years¹ — you can only live very close to a Just Salad before that starts to say something about you as a person. I’d made and lost friendships in that apartment, brought a puppy home to it, had a cold brew so intense I pulled the oven out from the wall to scrub the floor myself.² The apartment wasn’t perfect — there were several unbelievable interactions in the building-wide group chat, including a legal action over plants and a snitch planted by our landlord — but it was the first place I really felt at home. My parents had basically always lived apart; I’d never had just one address before. All of my books and magazines had never been under the same roof.

I’m not a signs-person, but it really did seem like the feeling was mutual. A new building started construction right next door, and every afternoon was soundtracked by jackhammers. I constantly ran into a new neighbor who had the most vile energy I’d ever encountered, like a European Wax Center would be preferable to sharing the elevator with her. I lived walking distance from three of the best slice shops I’d ever been to, and I went so often that I had started to seriously reconsider my pizza intake.³

I’d found a dreamy apartment and given a small fortune to a broker who looked like Teagan and Sarah but dressed like Justin Bieber, in baggy sweats and a snapback. She complained to me about her 23-year-old girlfriend’s friends and asked how I felt about pronouns. (“Well I … use them.”) After we signed the lease she gave us a ride to the apartment. She had a baseball bat in the backseat of her Jeep Wrangler. “It’s not weird,” she said, “I’m Italian.” And then, a curious detail about our new landlord: “If Frank asks you if I was wearing a hat, could you do me a solid and say I wasn’t?” 

But more important than all of that, and the thing I noticed when I first walked in, was that it was big enough for the Ellison Studio Float Sofa. I wanted a piece of furniture that was more grown-up than I sometimes feel. I was determined to have it. I learned all the wrong lessons from the Martha Stewart documentary: being extremely determined and a high-strung perfectionist really can do wonders for you. This was a sofa to lounge on and feel like Faye Dunaway.

Photo: Andrew Goble.

But first, it had to fit up the stairs. The logistics were tricky for a sofa that matches the dramatics of its owner: The living room is big but the hallways are narrow. I live in a walk-up older than the state I was born in. I measured every door and every hallway. I measured every step. It almost couldn’t be maneuvered to curve at the landing so I measured all the landings. I reached for the tape measure so often that when Andrew saw it on the coffee table he would just leave the room. I was the Erin Brockovich of getting this sofa in the apartment, I was the Lydia Tar of getting this sofa into the apartment. I was going to have it. I am my mother’s daughter, determined to a fault. I was going to will it to fit if I had to carry it up the stairs myself. I wanted it more because of all the back and forth, which is really saying something because I already wanted it quite a lot. With cardboard boxes leftover from our move, I created a nearly exact replica of the sofa’s dimensions. Imagine me maniacally taping together two dozen boxes of various sizes. It was about four times my size, but I made Andrew help me bring it up and down a flight of stairs myself. 

A vintage New York Film Festival poster from 1968, a collection of coffee table books (including Roger Deakins'!) and Auntie's Catholic school 1st grade picture, Remy. Photos: Andrew Goble.

I want a space that feels sumptuous, unusual, tidied but not prepared. I want to live somewhere that feels like Meryl Streep in Heartburn, the way she was just a woman who knows where things should go. I want to be a woman like Faye Dunaway in Network, obsessive and harsh, starting fights over her work. I want to be a woman like Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar, empirical over everything. This shows up in more chromes, with their sheeny severity. It shows up in a sofa that is so big it veers on too big, that anchors an otherwise-casual room. 

Upon delivery, it was a perfect fit. The Ellison Studios Float Sofa is a sofa to tell secrets on. It’s a sofa to stay up late watching The Age of Innocence. It can handle a little splatter of some reheated carbonara. It’s the setting for a passionate debate about the Industry season three finale being quite bad, actually, it’s a sofa to start a grudge on, it’s a sofa for a 14.6-pound poodle mix to look so intently at the screen when I’m watching the OG Real Housewives of New York City that I really do think Remy is following along. It’s the sofa where my best friend, who I sat next to on my first day at a new high school and decided I’d know her for the rest of my life, told me she’s going to be a mother. It’s the sofa where it took me 20 minutes to choose a movie (eventually Burnt) while Andrew fell asleep. It’s the sofa where I lay sideways, with a heating pad between my legs, and turn on a movie.

Photo: Andrew Goble. Dress, Toteme.

This post was sponsored by Ellison Studios. US shoppers can find their Float Sofa at Design Within Reach.

1. Plus an extra summer (my second intern summer in New York, when I had two internships and no money).

2. That was the last time I had a cold brew.

3. And Andrew and I wanted to live together!