“You can have all the references in the world,” says James Aguiar, fashion director for Modern Luxury, “but if it’s not really inherent to who you are, you’re not going to be comfortable.”

This past September, Aguiar and his husband, Mark Haldeman, a regional manager for Paul Smith, moved back into the Park Slope duplex they had rented from 1997 to 2006. But the second time around, the two reinvented their décor, from eccentric, with showy colors and taxidermy, including a crown-wearing crocodile, to evolved and unapologetic, with tasteful collisions of high- and low-pairings.

In our debut episode of Interior Lives, our design editor Wendy Goodman takes us inside and throughout each floor of the couple’s reconceived and hyper-personal space, where we learn not only the backstory to the couple’s incredible library (where Gucci and Target peacefully coexist under a malachite-wallpapered ceiling) but also the reason why they engage in a pastime few New Yorkers still make time for.