The idea of perspective is bandied about, toyed with, and turned on its head in this Upper East Side apartment, where London-based womenswear designer Jessica Kayll and her partner, New York real estate developer Mark Fisch , have set up their stateside home. For starters, the pandemic forced U.K. interior designer Rachel Chudley to conjure what she calls a “modernist baroque” tableau of texture and color, soul, and wit in her first American project from a transatlantic distance, having only been to the Fifth Avenue apartment once, when it was just four boxy rooms woefully bereft of any architectural charm.

What the ’80s-era flat lacked in classical detail, it more than made up for with one breathtakingly redeeming quality: “The most insane views ever,” Chudley says of the 21st-floor vantage point, where a double dose of scenery features Central Park’s verdant expanse on one side and the brusque intensity of New York’s skyline on the other.

So, although the designer’s marquee mission was to maximize sweeping bird’s-eye–view scenes, ceding the interiors to the point of minimalism was not an option. “Jessica and Mark both have a real love for dramatic design,” Chudley says. The designer drew upon her clients’ penchant for spectacle—Kayll’s kimono-inspired silk robes flourish with hand-painted florals while Fisch, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art , is a renowned collector of Old Masters paintings—to celebrate the vistas in perspective-bending ways that don’t sacrifice functionality or flair.

“I’m really drawn to color and things that are old and expressive,” Kayll says. “I absolutely love that each room now has its own distinct personality.” To set a theatrical mood in the home, Chudley swathed the entryway with wallpaper by Zuber , specifically a 17th-century–style pearlescent trompe l’oeil grand drape that lends movement, volume, light, and shadow to the 20th-century space. “The idea is that when you come through the front door, the curtain rises on the beautiful view of Central Park from across the living room,” Chudley says of the applause-worthy entrance.

The soft sunlight streaming from the living room’s west-facing windows needed a little help diffusing throughout the space, so Chudley slicked the ceiling in a high-gloss, lilac-gray paint by Donald Kaufman . The paint also mirrors the strong shapes in the design (the silhouette of the bespoke bar cabinet, for instance, echoes the rooftops of New York City) in the same way that the surface of a lake might—with blurred mystery and shadowy intrigue. Still, a pleasantly pudgy custom sofa in sunny velvet and a cozy pair of shearling Phillip Arctander clam chairs are an irresistible invitation to gather beneath the hazy, enigmatic surface for, say, a tarot reading .

Meanwhile, the couple’s shared office is boldly lined in deep claret velvet. Old Masters are in rotation for display on these walls, along with the current showing: Tomo Campbell ’s contemporary canvases, kinetic poetry in oil paint. But in truth, its inspiration is much more domestic: A bedroom in the couple’s London residence that’s cocooned in burgundy velvet.

To translate the sequestered-chic style to New York, Chudley chose an Abbott & Boyd velvet wall textile. Not only does the weighty fabric perform as luxurious insulation—“I call the office ‘The Warm Room,’” says Fisch, who begins most days in the snug space with coffee and a newspaper—but it also has an unexpected saturating effect on the view of the park. “It’s like a dark frame around a painting,” says Chudley. “It really intensifies the colors outside.”

By contrast, in the dining area Chudley played up a minor character, the sky, in the room’s eastern panorama of bustling metropolis to create a breathy, light-filled aerie. “I wanted to extend the sky as far as it would go into the room,” she says. Such a feat was an achievement of both color (for example, the celestine blue wall paint, also by Kaufman, is heightened in the veining of the marble table) and movement—or the perception thereof.

Even though the diaphanous, vegetable-dyed silk drapes practically billow at mere suggestion, the ceiling’s textured linen covering by Surface View depicts a 19th-century landscape of Margate, an English seaside town. But here it evokes a wild yonder spun with clouds, proving that the sky’s the limit when it comes to designing an apartment like this: A 1,600-square-foot rental (yes, you read that correctly), rife with contractual limitations, but all the aesthetic permanence and sentimental ownership of home—the most satisfying shift in perspective of all. “I would call it transformational,” Kayll says.

Lest visitors to Jessica Kayll and Mark Fisch’s Park Avenue apartment believe they’re in for the hamstrung design that the restrictive contracts of rental properties tend to inspire, Chudley swathed the entryway in a trompe l’oeil grand drape wallpaper by Zuber, setting the tone for the drama to come. The tableau—Fisch calls it “harmonious eclecticism,” and Chudley calls it “modernist baroque”—is a curtain-raiser, but the designer modestly attributes the spectacle to the applause-worthy view of Central Park from across the entryway-adjacent living room.

Chudley’s “modernist baroque” vision for this Park Avenue apartment is especially evident in this entryway vignette where a 17th-century Italian mirror’s weathered-gold boughs seem to creep along the soft trompe l’oeil folds of the Draperie by Zuber wallpaper . A solid-fir French provincial buffet contributes even more embellishment to the corner vignette with its elaborate ball-and-claw feet, unwittingly apropos of Stella, the resident one-year-old miniature Dachshund whose puppy paraphernalia is stashed in the sideboard.

A look out at the expansive apartment views.

To diffuse sunlight throughout the living room, Chudley chose a high-gloss paint by Donald Kaufman for the ceiling that also provides a mysterious lake-like reflection of the eclectic setup below. Though opposing rows of arched mirrors double down on the illusion of more space, they also add some architectural age. The dual array is reminiscent of an old Roman arcade, a vision underscored by a pair of distressed Doric order columns.

Chudley’s design for an art-loving couple’s ’80s-era Upper East Side apartment includes a living room of especially inviting trappings, from an overstuffed custom yellow velvet sofa to a pair of iconic Philip Arctander clam chairs to a generously-sized bespoke bar cabinet with a silhouette that recalls the New York City rooftops. Suffice to say, curling up with a drink—the house poison is a gin martini made with a small-batch Scottish spirit called Caorunn—is in order for all who pass through here.

Of the design’s perspective-challenging views, the dining room ceiling is one of the most sensational, owing to the textured-linen mural by U.K.–based Surface View on the ceiling. To extend the exterior skyview into the space, Chudley turned a wallpaper printed with a 19th-century landscape of Margate, an English seaside town, upside down to evoke an atmosphere of spun clouds. A celestial paint hue by Kaufman plays up the idea of a wild blue yonder, while the table, with its marble top and baroque-style stone base, adds a gloriously grounding effect.

Lining the walls of the shared office with a saturated claret velvet has less to do with tributing New York City’s velvet-rope night club culture and more to do with creating a quiet nook—the heavy textile is not only insulating, but also sound-dampening—beneficial acoustics for working at the craftsman Partners Desk by Wharton Esherick . Chudley likens the rich red hue—which emphasizes the wine-colored brushstrokes in the large-scale Tomo Campbell oil canvases—to a dark picture frame that intensifies the colors of the Central Park view.

A powder room isn’t denied a chance to shine with a coat of bronze paint by U.K–based Mylands . A reflection of the trompe l’oeil drape in the mirror adds drama by association.

The primary bedroom is awash in the palest pink, Tea Rose by Bauwerk , which Chudley likens to a sunset hue. An antique vanity is a grounding element in a space that tends toward ethereality. Gold-framed mirrors echo a similarly reflective moment in the living room, and also add worldly flair.

Jessica Kayll and Mark Fisch’s longtime habit of streaming shows in bed on their laptops gets a golden upgrade thanks to an antique chest that not only stashes a television, the only one in residence, but also mechanically raises the screen at the touch of a button once it’s showtime. (Now screening in the Kayll-Fisch household: Scenes From a Marriage and Black Mirror .) A gilded chinoiserie screen from Sotheby’s Home is reminiscent of Kayll’s hand-painted floral textiles.