House of Bijan scion Nicolas Bijan and his wife, interior designer and The Rich Kids of Beverly Hills alumna Roxy Bijan, were prepared to make an offer on their Beverly Hills estate based solely on a friend’s description. The 1941 estate in the covetable neighborhood of Beverly Hills Post Office sounded like the kind of traditional home they’d been dreaming of from their 1920s Spanish abode. “We were already sold,” says Nicolas of the house that was being very quietly shopped—its owner was Taylor Swift. “When we got to see it, finally, it was even more beautiful and charming and us than we had imagined.” Adds Roxy, “The gates open to this magical bridge, and you ascend into the middle of nowhere, with oak trees and deer.”
The incredible privacy of the acre-and-a-half property was already appealing, but it was made even more so by the fact that it’s just five minutes from Rodeo Drive, where Nicolas runs the menswear boutique made famous by his late father, Bijan. The four-bedroom, five-bathroom property’s motor court also spoke to the car collector whose brand collaborates with the likes of Aston Martin and Rolls-Royce.But the property wasn’t exactly turnkey. “I wanted to make it a bit more us,” says Roxy, who describes their style as a fusion of traditional and contemporary—“fringe in a fun, young way, not in a grandma way.” To update and brighten the home, they embarked on cosmetic renovations, lots of repainting and removing wallpaper, and some structural changes since the “his” portion of the primary suite was minuscule. “I like to joke that I love Roxy so much, I bought us a house that didn’t have a bathroom for me, only a bathroom for her,” says Nicolas with a laugh. “But she really outdid herself and built me the most beautiful showroom of a closet,” complete with a dramatic wall of shoe cubbies, lit just so. Says Roxy, “Nick’s boutique is very curated—it’s like walking into a museum, so I wanted to give him a little bit of that at home.”
Across the entire estate there is a strong sense of personalization and significance. The couple, fortunately, has similar taste. But the sense of trust Nicolas feels leaving big design decisions to his wife—they married at home in October after their Lake Como nuptials were canceled due to COVID—was hard-earned. Previously, “we fought like crazy over what she wanted to do, and I would come home from traveling to a half-demolished house,” says Nicolas. “It really showed me that I should just let her do her thing and reap the beautiful benefits.”
The result of that trust is a home imbued with meaning, such as a powder room clad in pineapple-patterned Gucci wallpaper that pays homage to Nicolas’s childhood on pineapple farms, and a color scheme that nods subtly to Bijan, who featured a different hue in each room of his house. They each ticked off wish-list items, too, such as the breakfast sunroom they built and Roxy’s all-pink bathroom and dressing room with a “floral old-lady vanity chair,” inspired by Annabel’s in London. “They’re my favorite rooms in the house—they’re just very me and soothing, happy and bright.”
Throughout, art pieces are an amalgamation of the couple’s more contemporary purchases—Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, and three snake–and–banana leaf pieces from Joel Mesler’s “The Alphabet of Creation (For Now)” series—and inherited works from Bijan’s extensive collection, including several Fernando Botero sculptures. (In the ’90s, Bijan recreated Botero paintings in his fashion ads, to great controversy.) “We put them in really random places because they’re exceptional sculptures and we wanted to just turn a corner and have one pop out of nowhere,” says Nicolas. “It makes it more fun,” adds Roxy.
The late luxury haberdasher’s exquisite Persian rugs also feature in several rooms. Another noteworthy piece is the carved banana leaf chair that belonged to Roxy’s friend Million Dollar Listing star Josh Flagg’s grandmother, Edith Flagg. It inspired a furniture line the pair designed together and expect to release this year. Roxy’s creative juices also flowed especially strong into the guest house, which she totally gutted during week two of pandemic lockdown. There she “went wild,” turning it into her personal fantasy with a yellow kitchen, rattan pendants, and floral curtains, using fabric originally intended as tablecloths for their Lake Como wedding. “Now it’s the cutest, happiest little bungalow,” says the interior designer.
For Nicolas, his home office is a high point. Not that their house is overly feminine, but “I needed something of mine that was masculine. Somewhere I could escape and do my own thing,” he says. “Now I get so excited for Zoom calls because I have this awesome backdrop—moody green, my presidential letters, and all these really cool things she put on the bookshelf,” including boxing gloves signed by Muhammad Ali and Kobe Bryant.
At first, Nicolas opposed the hot-pink roses Roxy planted outside his office window. But, in a COVID silver lining, he’s found deep appreciation. “The pandemic has allowed me to spend more time during the day here, and I’m finding all these new, beautiful qualities of our home as a result of that,” says Nicolas. “Normally I see Rodeo Drive, but to be in this house and look out and see roses and grass and oak trees has been really nice and so peaceful. I’m very lucky.”
