The popular fashion blogger, Natalia Shoestova behind shoestova.com, began her career as a lawyer and transitioned into fashion five years ago, gaining a global Instagram following of 137,000.She established GREY SPACE, a distribution company and consulting firm that aids in the development of regional talent and brings up-and-coming designers to the Middle East. After three years together in her triplex penthouse in Downtown Dubai, she and her husband are already planning their next move. As you can imagine, Natalia’s illustrious personal sales are always popular, and her fashion is also updated frequently. “Normally when we move we sell everything, and begin in the following house totally fresh out of the plastic new,” she says, making sense of that she adopts a similar strategy to dressing.
The lifestyle entrepreneur explains her decision to move from the city’s glittering financial district to a modest nineties bungalow by saying, “I wanted to escape from the glass towers.”When the pandemic struck, we were residing in a three-story penthouse; all I wanted was a place where I could feel grounded and in nature”. She initially envisioned this vacation rental villa as a place her family could look forward to visiting on weekends when they couldn’t travel anywhere else.
Despite the fact that this villa provided her with the needed emotional escape, it lacked character.As a result, Shustova made the decision to design her own version of a tranquil Mediterranean village. A landscape of olive trees, frangipani, and cacti were installed alongside undulating white plaster boundary walls.The pool got new artisanal tiles and an outdoor sauna, making it look like a resort, but the inside of this once-single-story house was transformed beyond recognition.
A floor-to-ceiling cabinet repurposed from Shustova’s previous shoe closet and Petite Friture’s Vertigo lamp draw the eye up to the unexpected volume as one enters the villa. The gabled ceilings make quite an impression.The couple spend the majority of their time in this area, which features a marble and brass island with a built-in sparkling water dispenser and a kitchen in sage green that has been rearranged to overlook the garden. “We designed this entirely ourselves,” says the lifestyle entrepreneur. “Everything you see here, came from my mind. I had this idea of a farmhouse, somewhere you could leave the city behind.”
A sense of wonder permeates the house.There is a TV den in the living room that can be reached by climbing up it. Underneath that, hidden behind a display wall with a Greek theme, is a DJ booth that can be pulled out whenever the mood strikes.
Her most recent DIY project, which involved converting the garage into a lavish outdoor lounge, would look right at home on a Greek island;The mosque’s minaret peeking out from behind is the only sign that we haven’t been teleported. “This space to me is Dubai,” she says. “Different cultures come together and we all try to make a beautiful life for ourselves.”
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