By William Li
Photographs by Frank Frances Studio
Alfredo Paredes has spent 30 years building other people’s worlds. Now, on Warren Street, he’s built his own. The former chief creative officer of Ralph Lauren—the man who shaped the brand’s flagship stores, conjured its legendary mansion presentations, and brought The Polo Bar to life—has opened Alfredo Paredes Studio in Hudson, New York. It is, unmistakably, a first act that feels like a culmination.
I had a front-row seat to his genius. When I served as president of Ralph Lauren Home, I watched Paredes do what few designers can: make rooms feel like memories. He doesn’t decorate. He narrates. Spaces unfold under his hand the way great films do—layered, emotional, alive. Since leaving Ralph Lauren, Paredes has led his own design firm, taking on residential and hospitality commissions across the globe. Hudson is where that practice finds its permanent home base: a studio, a shop, and a statement of intent.
The space announces that sensibility the moment you cross the threshold. Paredes’ own furniture line anchors the rooms: generous in scale, grounded in natural materials, built to age beautifully. His fabrics and rugs extend that vocabulary—pattern and texture that feel collected rather than designed.
“I wanted somewhere the furniture could live alongside great art and found objects,” he says, “the way things come together in a well-lived-in home.” It feels less like shopping than like being let inside somewhere private.
There’s function here, too—Farrow & Ball paints and Fine & Dandy wallcoverings make the studio a working resource for the designers and renovators who flock to this stretch of the Hudson Valley. But the soul of the place is something rarer: a point of view, fully formed and fiercely felt.
Hudson, with its collector’s eye and reverence for provenance, was always the destination. “There’s a real community here,” Paredes says, “that understands craft—and the idea that a space should tell a story.”
He would know. He’s been telling them for decades.
Vintage pieces, art, linens, and found objects move through the space like old friends.
