What $4,000 gets you in Dumbo, Brooklyn | NYC Apartment Tour (1 bedroom)

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hi hello how's it going it's elena welcome back to my channel and another episode of buzz did buzz then is a little series i have on my channel mostly here in new york as well as sometimes globally where i love to highlight the space the decor the local area sometimes even a little history and culture and today i'm really excited because we're heading to dumbo i actually filmed this episode so many months ago like basically i think before last summer then i lost certain footage a little while ago and then had to refilm it and then i was traveling i've only just now finally got into posting this video we're gonna be visiting la le today she lives in this beautiful one-bedroom apartment in dumbo she actually reached out to me via email and asked if i wanted to see your apartment and it is stunning so i thought it'd be a great place to highlight she also runs this account called normal.nyc where she showcases different interior design inspiration and these beautiful spaces so she knows her stuff before we head on over let's talk a little bit about the history of dumbo so dumbo actually stands for down under manhattan bridge overpass which i did not know until recently back in the 1830s it became a really popular area for industrialists and entrepreneurs because of its access to the east river which basically connects it to all these other parts of the city it quickly became an area where a bunch of factories and warehouses were built so it existed as this industrial hub throughout the 19th and 20th century and then around the 1920s or so there was a lot of de-industrialization kind of following the great depression so there was a wave of a lot of these factories shutting down so the area became a bit more stagnant and continued to kind of be that way it was an area with immigrants there was a big artist scene there especially in the 70s and 80s and then in the 90s or so there was this one real estate company that was kind of the one that like went in bought a bunch of real estate developed it and made it into the very expensive neighborhood that it is today now when you visit the dumbo you can see lots of beautiful restaurants coffee shops stores it's a really popular and expensive place to live so it's definitely a very desirable neighborhood that obviously has undergone a lot of change there's a lot of new york city has not gonna get too much into it but there's a little brief overview of dumbo all right one other thing before we head over to lale's a quick run from our sponsor today's sponsor is pear which is incredible high quality affordable eyewear company i don't wear prescription glasses but i love working with blue light glasses i'm on my computer basically every day for many many hours so what's great about pear is that they're super customizable um so like i said i got my blue light glasses right here hello i have these little magnetic clip-ons so you can mix and match your glasses however you want like hello just snap down some little 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cookbooks there the kitchen space is very perfect for one person i have a washer and i'm grateful for that in new york but the real deal of my apartment every home photo that i post on my feed and on my own youtube as well happens in here this is my magical space and the first thing that i want to start off talking about is this major restoration hardware gold gilded mirror one thing that i should mention about my apartment is that once you walk into this part of the first thing when people walk in here they're like what is this like how did you get this inside here it was quite a hassle but we made it happen right next to it is my restoration hardware cloud couch it was already a dream piece for me for a long time on top of my couch is actually one of the most special pieces i have in this home it's an art piece by alexander kowalski that was commissioned for me also the first piece that i got for this home as like an art piece a decor piece la le means tulip in turkish so the l is of course lara but the tulip is referring to my name the whole home has this more like a natural wipe going on very toned down colors i really don't like pop off a color for big furniture so this art piece as like a pop art piece um gives me that effect in dumbo on the weekends on sundays we have a flea market this was actually from a vendor in that flea market i got this last year for like 20 bucks a sunday and i literally carried like a block to my home and it worked perfectly this chair it's westerly chair by marcel bruyer it's a vintage chair i got this from friends of form one of my favorite vintage furniture finders in the city this is a original one from i believe 80s it was actually the first piece that i got for this home right next to it on the floor is a magazine rack from lincoln nyc which is again a vintage furniture shop also feel like the minute i saw this i felt it was the same exact energy that i just mentioned with the chair this magazine rack it's made out of used car belts and i have a couple of my favorite books and magazines there this is my little nuke area i also needed a desk space because it was a pandemic and we were still working from home so i got this desk literally as if it was made for here from urban outfitters this is a art piece by a street vendor in soho he is there like every weekend it's called vintage barbie and ken moving on to my chairs but i got these initially as these are from france and sun they're the replication of the famous genre chairs pr generators kind of works perfect because i can turn it around there and the same quality with the desks and it serves me as a desk chair and my mom's beautiful photo my favorite photo first she's actually my age in this photo and she's definitely one of my closest people in life living alone in a way with the family i kind of want their energy around me all the time so her beautiful picture is up here so moving on to my coffee table the coffee table is also from restoration hardware it's their live edge oak coffee table it's a very very destroyed piece these are made by my best friend camila and her brand new mic she is literally a neighbor living across the street like i can see her apartment through my windows this is from home union in williamsburg it's a vintage side table from the 80s again this way and the whole flower set up is from rosecrans in west village one of my favorite plant shops so i got this art piece from cb2 when i actually got it and then came home to put it up what i realized is that the brush strokes and the quality of the texture here is exactly the same with my columns so this is kind of like referring to the columns here when i saw this chair in rainy home which is a black-owned small business a female-owned small business in brooklyn they make like handmade chairs side tables dining tables beautiful furniture this is almost a art piece for me it is not a chair it's not the cherry you sit on lounge it's the chair you admire and you look at but it's just beautiful moving on to this little hallway that connects my bedroom to my bathroom this rug is from cold picnic a rock company again here based in new york i kind of want to take you guys to my bedroom next i really think that because it's a space where you wake up and you start your day it needs to be very calm and serene and peaceful whatever pieces for you i love waking up to sunlight i love waking up early in the morning i'm a very big morning person and restoration hardware cloud bed was one of the first stream items that i purchased for this home i wanted to place the bed like against the windows to have this windows as almost like a second headboard every night when i come back home and i can lay here it's my happy moment throughout the day and i have a big closet space here i'm like switching seasons i don't want to show like the whole thing behind me but it's perfect for someone who works in fashion and someone who has a lot of clothing i'm becoming more and more intentional over time and getting rid of a lot of things in my home last thing that i want to show you guys is my bathroom it's literally a very bright bathroom i love my selfie mirror it literally gives me the whole great energy to do my makeup here again i become much more minimal and sustainable in makeup i only have the things that i use like here and there on top of my counters favorite thing about the bathroom is the bat mats that i also got from cold picnic i think that's kind of it for my apartment i work as a fashion designer within my family business and i run a women's wear brand with them however for the past year during the pandemic i got very interested into interior design and i do believe that fashion and interior easily merge in together so when i moved into this apartment and i started decorating it and then i started sharing it on my ig it became much more popular and i created a whole other account called normalnyc where i daily share a mood board for interior became this big community over the one and a half years that i start doing interior consultation for other people find them vintage furniture so i source them and i help people decorate their own homes i do believe that interior design as a lot of people would say is a never-ending process as you grow as you mature in your own style your home changes with you i can say that my own style has become very natural very mature i cannot say i'm a big minimalist or eclectic person but i do love to have a lot of vintage furniture around me that can remind me of some sort of emotion for example i have a lot of family stuff in this home as well that i brought from turkey that reminds me of my parents of my family's presence around me as a turkish neighborhood lifestyle and having good connections with your neighbors are very much deeply embedded in my culture and here in new york as a foreign person it took me a while to be able to say that this city is my home even though i was always very much dreaming about being here the thing about dumbo that really made me feel home is that everyone knows everyone here it's a very actually small boutique neighborhood there are just couple buildings that are not that big and we have like local markets we have flea markets every weekend little coffee shops even though it's a very twisty neighborhood literally every day when you get out you see people doing photo shoots and everything people who are actually living here know each other and that's something that i never came across in new york and that makes me feel super home at dumbo fact that it's located right next to the water and you can watch the sunset you can watch the skyline every day as like your backyard gives me a sense of home as well it kind of reminds me of my home back in istanbul where i grew up i've been living in the states since my college i studied in boston i moved to new york after college since i was literally a little baby like almost five years old i somehow had this very natural feeling of i'm gonna be one day living in new york i was lucky enough to have a family who had business here that helped me to travel with them for their work new york has always been a big dream but the minute that i got inside here the city has this kind of an energy where it literally hits you in the face and it teaches you anything you need to learn i feel like once you move past your you know that first initial war with the city to settle down once it truly becomes home it's like no other place is good enough i feel like in this city no matter where you came from no matter what your story was you can truly truly reinvent yourself narrator of your story becomes only yourself it is definitely a city where you become more independent but still learn how to create family and that sense of belonging within other people and even though it's a very big city i feel like it's a very small city when you create a friend group and you create your home here it truly becomes a magical place you