It’s been two years since Kate Zubarieva, one of the co-founders of Sleeper, has lived in her Kyiv apartment full-time. But she thinks about it all the time: “It was something I just made my own,” she tells Vogue of the space, which she fled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Leaving it, she says, was a bit like leaving “a monument to yourself” behind.
Located in the bohemian Podil neighborhood—one of the oldest in the city—Zubarieva’s apartment is almost entirely white: eggshell walls are accented by neutral materials like concrete and travertine. She likens it to living inside a blank canvas. “I love the cleanness. I can put different art, or different flowers, and it will feel like a whole other place,” she says. (Architect Veronika Arutiunian, who also worked on the Sleeper headquarters, executed her vision.)
Intentional furnishings and surprising bits of texture also add visual interest. In the apartment’s kitchen hangs a contemporary painting by Ukrainian artist Borys Mykhailov, which Zubarieva got at the local Ludmila Bereznitska gallery, and on the shelves are a selection of books: The Sopranos Family Cookbook, Accidentally Wes Anderson, Betak: Fashion Show Revolution. Custom dining chairs are covered in white shearling—the same fabric Sleeper uses for their beloved Lulu Shearling Slippers—in a nod to the “energy” of Zubarieva’s favorite childhood teddy bear. “I wanted to have something that resembled her in the interior,” she explains. Even the most purely functional elements—like Vitra’s Coat Dots—were carefully curated.
Perhaps the most interesting oddity? The portrait of an unknown man from North Korea, where Zubarieva lived for three years as a child, when Ukraine was still part of the U.S.S.R. (Her father, who worked in the radio industry, was sent there on business.) And her favorite room in the apartment? The bathroom. Before the war, Zubarieva often sought solace in her tub after a long day at work; once, she read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary from cover to cover in there. “You never regret taking a bath,” she says.
Below, go inside Zubarieva’s Kyiv apartment.
