When you enter this ex-society girl’s bachelorette pad, you’re probably expecting full-on kitsch with winky-eyed sleeping masks and pink robes, along with straight-up typical touches, like sexy lingerie and bottles after bottles of perfume by the vanity mirror. But society girls, they grow up too. As soon as the elevator hits “ding!” at the 30th floor, right down the hall is subdued panache with a generous covering of stark white wood panel walls and a view of the Makati Central Business District, all in its 180-degree grandeur. Mounted on the walls are vignettes of art meant for indulging by the cultured. Neal Oshima, MM Yu, and a Salvador Dali, all poised to maybe say that this girl has taste even better than most of us combined. Silent, yet perhaps the most noticeable of them all, is this framed square artwork that almost looks like an Instagram shot. “It is an Instagram shot,” she says. “I took it and had it framed. My friends didn’t think I was serious.”

The rest of the space was curated in a way that doesn’t appear excessive, yet drips with expensive taste. The living room has Kenneth Cobonpue’s Kaja tables. Those ashtrays and antique silvers? Kelly Wearstler. Even the couch has Jim Thomspon pillows—custom-made, mind you. But out of everything, the den is the most lived in part of the apartment. “It’s like a bomb shelter. It’s where I eat, it’s where I… it’s practically where I live. It’s disgusting,” she snuffs.

But bare wood narra staircase and green malakai table from Russia aside, this is a place where grownups live. Inasmuch as we would to love have seen what we slated our eyes to see from the start, we accept defeat. She is definitely all-woman now.

Photo by Artu Nepomuceno

Source: Mara Miano for RED Magazine, “White Balance,” May 2015