Coronation Street

How do you redefine a company synonymous with its own larger-than-life founder? Jonathan Saunders is steering Diane von Furstenberg into the future with bold prints, gorgeous color, and a bit of straight-outta-London grit.

- Alison S. Cohn

“There’s almond milk and normal milk—do you want sugar?” asks Scottish designer Jonathan Saunders, as he bustles about the light-drenched open kitchen of his dreamy new three story, ivy-covered, Greek Revival slice of prime West Village real estate. (“My wedge of cheese,” Saunders calls the triangular building, which itself has an impressive fashion pedigree: It once belonged to Annie Leibovitz, and now to David and Lauren Bush Lauren.) “Banana bread—look at me!” the designer adds in a gravelly Glaswegian lilt—voted by Americans in a recent poll as the sexiest of British accents, and with good reason. Saunders, who not so long ago was living and working in gentrifying-but-still-edgy east London, seems acutely aware of the almost-too-Instagram-perfect nature of the moment. Staring in amazement through six oversize south- and west facing windows at his new neighborhood’s impressive sidewalk landscaping, he admits, “It still doesn’t feel quite like real life here.”