What Nick Olsen Sees

Early this month, Nick Olsen moved into a new studio apartment in midtown Manhattan that looks, he says charitably, like a "crack den." It's got one window, cheap wooden cabinets and a fridge looming alone along the kitchen wall. With moving boxes still unpacked, he says he can already picture the whole place finished -- sleek and serene -- and has set about transforming it.

If anyone can do it, he can.

Those who reside in the realm of the young and style-obsessed know of Olsen as something of a wunderkind: a walking-talking-blogging personification of urbane cool. He's a protege of New York status designer Miles Redd, had his previous apartment featured on the cover of Domino magazine and writes a buzz-generating blog for the shelter mag.

Oh, yeah. And he's 25 years old.

In addition to his early accomplishments, Olsen possesses that elusive, enviable quality called "eye" or "knack" or perhaps "flair": an innate sense of style so many of us aspire to and so few seem blessed with. It's the way some people knot a scarf, arrange flowers, throw a party or pick an unexpectedly perfect wall color. They never seem to wonder, "Do I know what I'm doing here?" Somehow they just know they know.

The rest of us stand back and admire -- through gritted teeth -- the inborn gifts of such people. Then we go home and attempt a few hackneyed tricks of our own: slipcovering the couch, perhaps, or trying the dining room table next to the fireplace in the living room. We want the eye, the flair; but wanting isn't the same thing as having, is it?

Olsen acknowledges that much of his approach to design comes down to instinct. A gut reaction. But part is pure fearlessness: a passionate interest and willingness to take chances. Nothing is irrevocable, he says; anything is fair game. An ugly fridge in a rental apartment? Olsen wallpapered his.

"I wish people would think of decorating their home in the same way they think about fashion, because they're willing to take more chances with that," he says. "Because decorating is a lot of troubleshooting."

Such confidence didn't come overnight.

Growing up in Pensacola, Fla., Olsen was doodling dream houses at the age of 6. By 10 he was enrolled in formal art classes. In high school, while classmates were deep into the melodrama unfolding on "Beverly Hills, 90210," Olsen was out searching for the perfect sofa for his bedroom and unearthed it at a church-run thrift store: a 1950s castoff long past its prime. Looking past the stained orange damask upholstery to the classic tufted back, oversize cushions and baroque frame, he snapped it up for $40.

"I ran home and told my dad I'd just bought a couch and needed him to pick it up." His father obliged, and Olsen painted the frame and recovered the sofa himself, replacing the orange damask with white linen. That, he now realizes, was a pivotal event.

A few reupholstering jobs later and with a degree in architecture from Columbia University, Olsen saw a spread in W magazine about Redd, a high-profile designer for moneyed clients and chic hot spots who had recently been named creative director of Oscar de la Renta's home line.