Funnyman Jordan Firstman’s L.A. Home Defies All Expectations—Even His Own
Jordan Firstman has had one hell of a 2020. The TV writer turned Instagram darling has become one of the most reliable sources of Internet glee thanks to his hilarious and slightly unhinged impressions. (If you’re unfamiliar, he embodies everything from Mother Nature , to the concept of a “job,” to the PR rep of the fly on Mike Pence’s head .) But things didn’t start off that way. After the one-two punch of a job falling through and a pretty major breakup (where his ex took most of the stuff), he found himself staring down his pandemic isolation in a fairly empty apartment. Granted, it was a Dion Neutra rental with a pretty clutch pool, but it was a space that needed a physical and emotional overhaul, stat.
Fatefully, his pandemic bubble included none other than John Sharp . Firstman had seen Sharp’s work firsthand when the designer decorated the home of their mutual friends, and Firstman knew that he was the one for the project. Sharp had seen Firstman’s place on Instagram and was less than impressed. Sharp recalls, “I would see the background of where he was shooting these videos and I would be like, ‘Girl, no…people are watching this!’” The two decided to collaborate, knowing that Firstman’s desire to create a space that he describes as being “as free and creative and fun as I was feeling” was both fully in Sharp’s aesthetic wheelhouse and just the kind of project he relishes. Firstman’s space was not only a fairly blank slate, he also was leaning into creating a home that was fully himself, a transition Sharp loves. “It’s my favorite to be in the space of designing for their new person and also reimagining their old person.” The pair found themselves wonderfully in sync, their hard conversations tackling such hot-button issues as clouds versus palm trees and how surreal is too surreal? “I’ve had very few collaborations as positive as my one with John; it was so tangible and everything was just ‘yes,’ and then more,” chimes Firstman.
The vintage sectional from Pop Up Home was in the original iteration of the space and worked perfectly, so Sharp kept it and added jaguar print ottomans from Rhett Baruch Art+Design and a pink glass coffee table from Doodad .
Though the initial aesthetic inspiration was Miami neon jungle, the pair let inspiration come to them as they scoured the internet and flea markets for one-of-a-kind finds that would make their ideas bigger and bolder than they had initially dreamed. While working during COVID was a challenge in numerous ways, the pair found that the L.A. design community had pivoted quickly and successfully to Instagram, so Sharp was able to source with relative ease and feel connected to the design community during the pandemic. Sharp says he found it a relief to “make something really rad while everything was really sad.”
Outfitting the rental really became a community endeavor. Sharp commissioning their friend Abel Macias to paint the neon, black light–friendly leaves on the wall, and the duo turned to Instagram to find someone who was able to paint the cloud mural. Sharp felt even more tapped into the antique community: “These people are historians, the way they save these items,” appreciating the ways that people’s treasured items have gone onto nestle into the Barbarella -meets-Beetlejuice-meets-Dalí-meets-seedy-L.A.-nightclub fantasia that Firstman’s apartment would eventually become. “I’m attracted to over-the-top tacky things probably because [I grew up on] Long Island,” Firstman jokes, when explaining his approach to the apartment, “but I’ve found a way to finesse it into taste.”
While the floor-to-ceiling tiered custom-fur built-in bed and flanked lounge platform by Studio John Sharp, fabricated by Emhan X Ray, is inarguably the centerpiece of the bedroom, the lamp, hand table , and space-age etagere show off Sharp’s vintage-shopping prowess.
When it comes to reclaiming one’s space after a breakup, creating a bedroom of one’s own is perhaps the truest act of post-breakup freedom. Sharp took a room that was, well, sort of dismal—a mattress on the floor after the ex took the bed frame—and turned it into a one-of-a kind textured, sexual wonderland. The faux-fur almond-colored platform bed not only houses a sunken mattress but also a designated wining and dining area off to the side, and two large MCM lamps placed to look especially gigantic. Oh, and there’s a caramel-colored faux-fur wall as well.
What is perhaps most inspiring about Firstman’s apartment is that with all of the neon and fur and sexy Grecian vibes, it is at its core a fully intentional space that is designed for living, specifically for Firstman to live as he so chooses. “I have this space and this freedom to only be myself. It’s one of the beautiful parts of being single, not just in design but in so much of life,” he says. The process, as well as the final product, brought Firstman closer to himself, and when he looks at the space he and Sharp created he can’t help but think, “Yeah we fucking did that.”
