Content creator Marjhan Kausar curates home with eclectic exuberance

Apr 01, 2024

Asih Jenie

This article first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar Singapore, the leading fashion glossy on the best of style, beauty, design, travel and the arts. Go to harpersbazaar.com.sg and follow @harpersbazaarsg on Instagram; harpersbazaarsingapore on Facebook. The July 2023 issue is out on newsstands now.

SINGAPORE – “I skipped the neutral beige home decor aesthetic because colourful spaces are my happiness,” says Ms Marjhan Kausar, as she offers a peek into her home, a 2,034 sq ft apartment in one of the private residential towers in Orchard Road’s backyard.

The 30-year-old content creator and her husband Siraj Ali, a private banker, did not make any architectural changes to the apartment or hire an interior designer when they moved in in 2019.

Yet, as visitors step out of the lift, they enter a series of soulful spaces clearly put together by someone with a keen eye for design.

Here, family heirlooms and iconic design pieces exist harmoniously with handmade finds and creatively modified high-street items, their bright hues and patterns lending a personal touch to the monochromatic material palette.

“I just love mixing and matching – that’s my thing,” Ms Kausar says.

She has worn many creative hats in her life and credits her parents for bringing her up with great design aesthetics.

Born in Philadelphia to a Pakistani father and Ecuadorian-American mother, she grew up in Singapore and studied footwear design at the London College of Fashion in Britain.

Upon returning here, she taught herself graphic design while hunting for a job. And she learnt about branding when she landed a role as head of marketing for a property developer, where she also got to sit in at architectural and interior design meetings.

She parlayed these skills into a side hustle: creating content for collaborators and clients across genres.

Finding her true calling in art directing, she quit her job to do it full-time.

The aesthetic of Ms Kausar’s home is an extension of her fashion style – eclectic with a distinct edge that comes from that fearless ease of mixing the traditional and the contemporary.

“You can find elements of Desi culture woven into our home. It’s important to keep cultures alive, whether in books, pieces we have collected on our trips or things that have been passed on to us from our families,” she says.

Mr Ali’s side of the family, which has Indian and Iranian heritage, further expands the interior and decor vocabularies.

Past the entrance, decorated with paintings done on antique Urdu parchments and evil-eye amulets, is an airy living space with a sweeping view of the neighbourhood.

Kausar divides the long, rectangular space into two separate areas using the roomy Jasper Sofa system from King Living. The modular system was brought over from the couple’s former home in Nassim Hill, where it presided over the living room in a U-shaped configuration.

Ms Kausar has reconfigured it into a three-seater and an L-shape piece with a daybed to demarcate the lounge and the TV area.

The three-seater creates a hangout space for adults, while the L-shape piece with a daybed is mostly used by the couple’s 21-month-old son, Riyan, and the family’s two dogs, golden retriever Bruno and maltese-poodle Peanut.

Ms Kausar has built the colour scheme of the lounge around a statement Persian rug gifted by her in-laws. “It’s a rare piece dyed by actual turquoise stones,” she says.

Made of silk, it has a shimmery quality that looks lighter from one side and darker from the other, adding a dimension to the colour.

“I’m not a blue person, I usually gravitate towards warm colours. But I think turquoise is a really calming colour to live with,” she adds.

The cushions come with detailing in orange – blue’s complementary hue on the colour wheel – to tie it with the home’s broader interior palette.

Around the sitting area are Instagram-ready vignettes.

In one corner is the Arco floor lamp from Flos, a mid-century icon designed by Italian brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. Its famed 2m arc perfectly frames the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman from Herman Miller, another seminal piece in world design history.

Behind the chair, displayed on its easel, is a painting by Ms Kausar’s grandfather, James Edward Huiskamp. A famous architect in the 1970s American Midwest, he is a collector of mid-century modern furniture, which influenced Kausar’s edits for her own home.

Not all the furniture pieces that do the visual heavy-lifting are designer items.

Some have more humble origins, like the shelving system on the opposite wall, which was a black powder-coated Ikea item that Ms Kausar spray-painted gold and decorated with more handsome books, candles, photographs and two more of her grandfather’s colourful paintings.

The living area segues seamlessly into the dining room in an L-shape configuration.

Guests sitting on the living room’s sofa are treated to glimpses of colours from the dining room’s wall, courtesy of its framed Hermes scarves.

Ms Kausar credits her husband for the idea. “His grandmother had a massive collection of saris, and one of his aunts had one framed in her house – a huge statement piece which inspired him.”

When they got married, he told her he wanted to frame textiles instead of artwork.

The couple visited Hermes boutiques and picked six pieces from the Spring/Summer 2017 collection as artwork. Four now adorn the white wall behind Philippe Starck’s Kartell creations, TomTom dining table and Ghost chairs, while the other two are hung above the blue-painted Ikea cabinet on the other side.

These have been curated for their colours, but if Ms Kausar had to pick a favourite, hers are the intricate Parures de Samourai by Aline Honore and the fun, comic-style Space Shopping au Faubourg by Dimitri Rybaltchenko.

One of the common bedrooms has been repurposed into her walk-in wardrobe and home office. A bed has been added recently to turn it into a guest room.

While full-height open shelves hold her shoes and bags, a wardrobe houses her occasion wear, including lavishly beaded and embroidered traditional Pakistani and Indian attire.

In contrast with the rest of the home’s blue-, pink- and orange-splashed decor, the master suite is an oasis of tranquillity awash in off-white, beige and sumptuously tactile textures.

“We used to have a colourful bedroom. But after we had a kid and two pets, we needed a calming space,” she says.

Soft furnishings create a restful ambience here. The white tweed-like pattern of King Living’s Jasper bed frame is beautifully paired with Sunday Bedding’s bamboo bed linen, Castlery’s boucle fabric on the Amber swivel chair, and rustic-look rug.

Above the bed, 15 black-and-white photographs taken by Kausar showcase the family’s happy moments.

The coloured elements in this room are well hidden inside a custom white Ikea wardrobe, which neatly stores Kausar’s favourite daily wear.

These include separates and sets organised by materials, as well as sunglasses, costume jewellery and khussas (Pakistani embroidered shoes) stored by colours in pull-out trays and baskets.

“You have to respect all the things you have. Everything deserves to have its own home,” she says.

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