Prepare to be intrigued, intimidated and, if you are the jealous or private type, possibly a little nauseated. The Novogratz family — two good-looking parents and seven photogenic children, along with their $25 million Manhattan mansion, Brazilian beach house, New England country estate, famous friends and cool parties — could soon be the name that you associate with everything from sandwich bags to boutique hotels.
Robert Novogratz, 46, his wife Cortney, 37, and their brood, which includes two sets of twins, have been renovating dilapidated buildings in New York’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods for 13 years. Along the way, they have charmed the city’s style magazines and blogs with their ability to combine French salvage, flea market finds, undiscovered artists and high-end fittings to striking effect.
Cortney’s razor-sharp cheekbones, the pair’s boho-luxe style and their habit of attracting high-profile friends (Suzanne Vega sang at the recent christening of Major, the youngest Novogratz) didn’t hurt their profile either. The New York Times compared them to the Jazz Age It couple immortalised in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night. The New York Observer called them a “disturbingly handsome couple”. It was only a matter of time before their fame spread outside Manhattan’s arty elite. Now, with a design memoir, Downtown Chic, just released in America and the UK, a reality television series in the pipeline and the whole family signed up to Ford Models modelling agency, the Novogratzes are poised for world domination.
So in tune are Robert and Cortney that they finish each other’s sentences. “With Twitter, Facebook and the younger generation videoing and taping everything . . .” Robert starts, “. . . it’s almost like you already have a public life,” continues Cortney, before Robert adds “so we took it one step further”. They did, however, suffer sleepless nights before signing up to the reality show being made for Bravo, the television company behind gems including Make Me A Supermodel, mainly over how their children would react. “Sometimes they’re tired at photoshoots or they come home after a bad day of school,” Robert says. “Some of them are more into it than others. But they’re enjoying it. And that’s our only concern. You don’t want to expose your kids to something they can’t handle.”
They made the decision to go ahead with the show mainly because, as Cortney puts it, raising seven children in America’s most expensive city means that they can never stop hustling. Neither husband nor wife comes from money. Now that they are a “family brand” they are the recipients of bounty such as job lots of sandwich bags, sent to them by sponsors, hopeful that some of the Novogratz glamour will rub off.
Ken Druckerman, whose company Left/Right is producing the reality show, likens Robert and Cortney to “the cool parents at your kids’ school”. “The gold standard in reality TV is to find a family that’s eminently relate-able, a bit like you and me, and also more interesting,” he says. “Their family’s bigger, their house is cooler, their life is more dynamic, yet they have the same issues we all have. It’s your life, amplified exponentially.”
Amplified it certainly is. Even with the children — Wolfgang, 12, twins Tallulah and Bellamy, 10, Breaker, 8, twins Five and Holleder, 4 — at school, and four-month-old Major with Heni Kovacs, the Novogratzes’ nanny and assistant, the house is overflowing with people. A crew of at least ten from Left/Right are loitering on the ground floor, which they have filled with lighting and electrical cords. Employees of the Novogratzes’ company, Sixx Design, work on laptops at the kitchen table and various contacts and friends pop in and out via the unlocked front door. Cortney seamlessly conducts an interview while signing for packages thrust at her by delivery men.
The family is used to living in disarray. Since they started out as novice property developers, purchasing their first house, a condemned brownstone, for $450,000 in 1996, the Novogratzes have moved about 12 times. They usually live in their properties during the renovation, sometimes going without heating or water, and happily store treasures that they have lugged back from country markets in France for years until they find the right opportunity to use them.
The couple met when Cortney was in college and moved from the South of the United States to Manhattan in the early 1990s. Dissatisfied with his job as a stockbroker, Robert threw big parties as an outlet for his creativity and Cortney worked as a waitress while trying to make it as an actress. They were so short of cash when they renovated that first house, they could not afford an architect so they learnt how to design a house from scratch.
Their next site, a manufacturing building and adjoining car park that they bought for $500,000, sold a few years later for a combined $10.8 million. They used the cash to fund the purchase of a row of four gun shops, which they turned into houses. The beach house in Brazil and country house in Massachusetts were side projects. The family were living in one of the former gun shops when they spotted the plot that their current house sits on, on the market for $4.3 million.
The resulting 9,000 sq-ft concrete and steel townhouse took two years to create. It is beside the Hudson River with views of the Empire State Building in one direction and the Statue of Liberty in another. There is a basketball court on the roof, works by the British artist Ann Carrington on the walls and furniture by the architect Zaha Hadid mixed in with old Indonesian four-poster beds and multicoloured chandeliers.
While working on the house, the couple also put together Downtown Chic: Designing Your Dream Home, From Wreck to Ravishing. The book makes renovating a property when you are eight months pregnant sound easy. But the Novogratzes admit that there were times when money was so tight that they feared that they would miss their mortgage payments. “One time I had a $6,000 camera, a Hasselblad, and I had to sell it to get through a project,” Robert recalls. “Even in this house we made cuts. We were going to have all the walls Venetian-plastered like we’ve done previously but it was an extra $100,000 so we just did paint.”
Robert envisions turning his family into a brand synonymous with cool design. “There’s no family Martha Stewart,” he points out. “Good taste doesn’t come with money, you need creativity, and that can happen anywhere. It’s our goal to get that across. And if it’s not us, it’ll be someone else.”
So far, responses to the Novogratzes range from reverential — the online lifestyle magazine We Heart Stuff describes them as “fabulously hip” — to scathing: “Uninspired and talentless fake designers”, runs a YouTube review. They describe themselves as old school in that it is OK for there to be a winner in the egg-and-spoon race or for a child not to make the team. There are no expensive goody bags at their childrens’ parties, though there is alcohol for the adults who attend.
“I’m too frickin’ busy to live through my kids,” Robert jokes. “There’s nothing wrong with kicking a kid in the butt sometimes and telling them to work harder. Our whole motto is to keep them humble and keep them hungry. And they’re good kids, very polite and modest.”
Too many parents have forgotten that a family is supposed to be fun, Cortney adds. “If you let the anxiety overwhelm you, you forget that it’s supposed to be fun, to smell the cake and enjoy blowing up the balloons,” she says. “All mums’ cupcakes don’t turn out like Martha Stewart’s because you’ve got a two-year-old on your hip and an eight-year-old digging in the batter. We’re tangible and it could inspire people to live life, make mistakes, bake cupcakes even if they’re not perfect.”
The couple seem relaxed about the possibility of public opprobrium. Robert jokes about the fact that he continued riding their Vespa with Cortney on the back even when she was heavily pregnant, despite knowing that it would infuriate safety campaigners. “You don’t have seven kids if you give a s*** what people think,” Cortney laughs. She seems to mean it. In a world filled with guides for perfect parenting, she is open about having two part-time nannies. Her favourite “recipe” involves a takeaway menu, a couch and a cocktail. Nor does she appear to have succumbed to Botox ; her eyes crinkle appealingly when she smiles.
There are downsides to life in the public eye, such as the decision by Cortney’s parents not to attend Major’s christening because they were uncomfortable about the reality TV element, but the couple are sanguine. “If the show really sucks, at least we’ll have some nice home movies,” Robert shrugs.
The Novogratzes’ earthy image is going to be one of their biggest selling points, according to Craig Lawrence, vice-president of strategic partnerships at Ford Models. In a recession consumers want authenticity, he said: “It’s got to be organic and real.” He pictures the Novogratzes promoting and collaborating on products with brands ranging from Tiffany to the online superstore Target.
The Novogratzes, meanwhile, hope that the media exposure will allow them to branch out from developing houses. The couple are still consulting on clients’ properties — they have just finished a 24-room boutique hotel in New Jersey — but they realise that the gravy train is no longer at full steam. Last year they put a house on the market for $18 million but ended up having to rent it out.
Some argue that the family merely rode the surging property ladder of the 1990s better than most. This accusation is the only one to ruffle Cortney’s feathers. “We’re not average people; we created opportunities for ourselves, took risks,” she insists. “And we were sacrificing things, we always had our minds on the project.” Robert is a little more measured, pointing out that they never borrowed more than they could afford. Now, he sees great opportunities in Manhattan’s falling property prices but is holding off buying until they sell one of their two homes in the city. “We realise we got lucky with a great economy and housing market, and we’re not going to be stupid enough to lose that windfall.”
Allen Adamson, managing director at the New York office of Landor, the brand consultancy, reckons that the Novogratzes’ attempt to turn themselves into a brand is likely to be successful. “Everyone wants real people to endorse their products but the problem is that most real people aren’t the ones that you want to go and talk to at a party,” he says. “They have the right balance between real but interesting.” But Adamson warns that the family’s appeal may wane as they become ubiquitous.
By then Robert and Cortney are likely to have moved on to the next big thing. The word that the couple use the most is “risk”. “I had really big dreams and I’m not done,” Cortney says, surprising her husband with her vehemence. “I grew up in a small town, I wanted the things I wanted and I’m going to go fight for them. Life’s just out there for the taking.”
Downtown Chic: Designing Your Dream Home: From Wreck to Ravishing, published by Rizzoli, £25
