Inga Berman: “I am ready to stay in the bath with champagne for days, so I love him” | Olga Zaretskaya for Tatler Russia
There was a secret meaning in the endless lifts of fashionistas Inga Berman – she was preparing to show the Tatler the penthouse to which this elevator leads.
“He immediately said that I was not a cook, not a dishwasher, and not a washerwoman. I am pleased, I am pleased. And in general, I have a manicure. ” Inga Berman, about whom all secular Moscow suddenly spoke, might not have bothered to explain why she was not talking about the household. The unearthly interior speaks for itself. In the four-story penthouse on Shabolovka Street, I even found a twenty-meter pool, from which the infinity system pours water into the panoramic windows on all seven Moscow skyscrapers at once. Even a black podium aquarium for stingrays and piranhas eating them up at night. I didn’t find only the kitchen, because it wasn’t there: behind the piercing elevator, a certain minimalistic construction was clinging to the wall, but it was decidedly impossible to cook there. A black panel covers the refrigerator, the stomach of which takes nothing but champagne. The hostess laughs: “I love the rose. Saw, drink and drink it. I don’t have this – so that everything is so correct, stop alcohol, stop fast food and a halo lights up around your head. I’m ready to stay in the bath with champagne for days, so I love him. ”
A friend of the life of the co-owner of Capital Group, Eduard Berman, herself as a rose. Understands that her delicate shade Helmut Lang T-shirt wonderfully fits into the glass surroundings. (From KM 20 Oli Karput, beloved woman of Pavel Cho, Berman’s construction partner. Because “we girls must help each other.”) Inga skiros is tapping the Greek marble floor with thin heels of Céline sandals, but this is in honor premieres in The Tatler. She usually walks at home in the simplest Havaianas flip-flops and Organic by John Patrick combinations.
Friends say that the apartment is the poured residence of Dr. Evil. Here are the chairs, the backs of which behind the back of a man seem to be wings. Here are shelves from the 1960s, champignon puffs, oval portholes in wavy wall panels. Inga and her gorgeous platinum square with bangs are always ready to play along – you get a spilled robot girl from Austin Powers.
There is not a single calm wall in the penthouse: everything is in niches and sculptural growths, behind which there is a backlight. Its colors can be changed so that the house shines with orange, blue, red lights – like a space station hovering above the eighteenth floor, above all neighboring roofs, above trees. Inga in it hovered between the fantastic Shukhov Tower and the tram depot of the same great architect.
Retrofuturism in the apartment was arranged by the architect Sergey Estrin (it was he who, with the lively financial participation of Berman, reconstructed the synagogue on Bronnaya). Almost all the furniture was made according to his sketches. He repeats a semicircular, caterpillar-like leather sofa for his beloved customer again and again in different colors. But the long, flowing ribbon-shaped gymnast’s coffee table made of white corian is an exclusive of this particular apartment. Like the huge, full-wall glass in the living room onto which Estrin transferred the engraving of “Moses with the Tablets of the Testament” by Gustave Dore. Inga repeated to me several times that this was a Jewish topic. But the pointing finger of Moses demanded a final clarification of an important issue.
“If you look from my mother’s side, then I’m not Jewish. But blood is flowing in me. ” – “So you can marry you?” – “I need to marry!”
Inga and Eduard Berman have been together for fifteen years, they have two sons. Mark twelve, Leo five. Her education is kosher: the Russian Academy of Advocacy, the course of family law with the wife of Mikhail Barshchevsky Olga, an internship with Gennady Goldin. Inga did not like going to the sad clients to Sailor’s Silence Inga for Goldin’s lawyer; her cherished dream was family law.
On the fourth floor of the penthouse there is an open veranda and two guest bedrooms. And before there was Mark’s room, not stepping out of the general cosmic color. Illumination from under the bed and from the portholes in the walls of the color of cabernet – yes. Big olive in a tub – yes. Delicate wallpaper with a border – no. “All these bears, wuxi-pusi, blue and pink walls are not our way. The child must develop in the right adult room with design. Plus they grow so fast. You don’t have time to look back how you will have to change the interior. ”
nstead of changing the interior, the Eduard Berman family has the opportunity to change their apartments: live here and there, then in Ibiza in forty-two meters, champagne-colored, with water cannons, the Elizabeth boat (in honor of Edward’s mother). In the house on Tsvetnoy, for example, Inge is nice to be side by side with Olga Karput. It’s also close to school.
Inga is not a cook, but she doesn’t starve her sons: she buys them lunches and dinners in Jerusalem on the roof of the synagogue, in Uzbekistan, Piazza Italyana, and Japanese Nobu. The stuffed pike from the Russian “Pushkin” is enjoying constant success. For the sake of cosmopolitanism, the family menu has “Georgian” on “Mayakovskaya” and Hudson Deli in the City — these establishments were opened by the eldest son of Berman Felix, along with childhood friend David Berkovich. At the Central Market, children eat tom yam and souvlaki with fries sticking out of pita. Only pork and rabbit are banned. And confectionery: Inga watched the scary documentary “Sugar” and was so penetrated that she deprived everyone of sweets. At the beginning of the summer, she sent the boys in front of Ibiza a whole box of Rappoport sausages from the goose – in general, it cannot be said that she is a bad mother.
In Central, in addition to prepared food, there is almost a real bazaar, but Inga does not go down there. Because he does not know how to bargain – childhood in Taganrog taught nothing to a beauty. In addition, she is afraid that there will be screams of “girl!” With a grab on long legs. Cellars are not at all attracted to her. The higher the more comfortable.
We sit in the living room on the piranha podium and stare out the window for a long while in silence. Below us is the river and Gorky Park. A very convincing view of the City with the Oko and City of Capitals towers opens up. Inga suddenly says: “I read that a person who has chosen life for himself in a penthouse feels himself a little king. He is above all. ” “Is it important to you?” “It is more important to Edward. But I like it too. I am not afraid of heights and panoramic glazing, but with ordinary windows I feel uncomfortable. Therefore, it is absolutely indifferent to hotels in ancient buildings. I don’t even like Paris. London is better – if Mark goes to study there, I will be glad to live nearby and I will take my mother with me. But I really liked it only at the forty-five-story Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, where a three-meter bed and a bathroom the size of our pool. For many, I heard, at an altitude arrhythmia begins. But not with me and not with my children. ”
The pool with a counter current on the third floor of the penthouse makes a powerful impression. Especially in the evening, when the backlight turns on and the small cells of the mosaic shimmer like the scales of a huge dragon. The Eye winks out the window. Remember the advertisement for the “Legend of Tsvetnoy” new building? Inga says that Naomi in the pool actually filmed here: “Well, you know, not everything happens for real.” There is a hammam with a view of the city and a transparent shower cabin, which can be easily confused with the same transparent elevator shaft. And Life Fitness simulators, which Inga ignores, only Eduard Borisovich likes to cut circles on an ellipse under the techno Internet radio station DI.FM.
Under the simulators, on the second floor, Berman equipped himself with an oval office, a secret room for serious male conversations. Opposite the study is the bedroom, where the black bed, invented by the architect Estrin, is inscribed in a huge white sink. Windows – on three sides, consider that there are no walls (everything is covered by a niche-sink), therefore there is no furniture squeezing in the corners. Only a bed. If the owner does not want, no one will find the bedroom. An entrance is a part of a white wall that is pushed inward with the push of a button.
The study and bedroom are separated by a glass captain’s bridge overlooking the windows. It can be seen from below: there is no full overlap over the living room, it is flooded with a second light. Curtains are stretched to both floors, from a distance similar to Roman, but turned out to be an installation of cut and complexly assembled strips of dense golden silk. To the curtains to the rhythm of the bridge is a white plaster stucco molding-drapery. Ingu’s new architectural forms fascinate: “Do you know what Estrin called it? The stucco molding in his process went under the pseudonym “snakes”. And all together – “the latest expressionism, not without sophisticated intellectualism.” How do you like it? ”
I just like the architect says. The breathtaking. And not for a second does the feeling that all this was built under party hard – with the goal of creating in Moscow a private alternative to the clubs beloved by the owner of Ibiza. DJ should be on the podium with the fish. The kitchen is just fine for Inga to mix her signature Aviation cocktail (gin, maraschino, lemon juice and violet liqueur Crème de Violette, which gives the drink a lilac color of the sky at the awakening dawn). What is called a dressing room here is not serious for such a fashionable woman – although she says that all clothing not suitable for the weather is stored in another apartment allocated for this business.
But Eduard Berman doesn’t let any DJs in here, except sometimes friends go to the aperitif, watch a movie or smoke a hookah. He doesn’t arrange a disco at home fundamentally – for this, there is Wow and “Gas Holder” in Moscow, where Inga is dancing with her best friend Anya Ivchenko (so best that they were nicknamed Belyanochka and Rosochka in Moscow). In addition, there is always a pleasant option to look at Pavel Cho and Ola Karput – it is always fun at their apartment parties.
At one time, the penthouse on Shabolovka wanted to rent Timati, but “did not agree” – to the delight of the neighbors. And Inge, who is afraid that the guests will scratch, stain or even break the “latest expressionism”: “You know how it happens, people get free. Someone fell, someone wanted to smoke, but we are not allowed. I feel sorry for spoiling the space interior. It’s scary that it will turn into the “Apartment” bar on Rochdelskaya – it’s cool there at night, but in the daylight you can see how much everything was killed. ”
Damage to property, a waste of money – not in the tradition of the family. The boy Mark raves about football, he remembers the compositions of all the teams and the resumes of the coaches – but the World Cup was mostly watched on TV from Ibiza. My mother has an ironic logic: “When we were told that a box for three games costs one million six hundred thousand dollars, I realized that I did not like football. Let Mark be carried away somewhere in the distance. ”
Caring for the interior did not stop the hostess from buying a beagle, the most destructive of all possible pets: “I love this infection, but sometimes I just want to kill it. The fight ate Céline glasses. Ate, a fetishist, my underpants, from them there were only tags Eres and La Perla. But we all became wildly disciplined: things were removed, the children made their own beds. The happiness that I have a dressing room is untouchable for him and in general for anyone else’s territory. Entrance is allowed only to me and the housekeeper. There I am “in the house.”
Inge has said a million times that this is a very strange apartment. She answered as many times: “It’s just that these apartments are few, there is nothing to compare with. In addition, everyone has a different idea about the “house”. Small and cute presses on me, I am suffocating. My place is in the penthouse. ”
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