Interior Tastemaker and Former Celeb Stylist Opens Home in Kinderhook

From styling Lady Gaga to opening a chic home furnishing store in the increasingly hip village of Kinderhook, Nicole R. Fisher has taken a dynamic, if circuitous, route to success as a high-end interior designer. Her new shop, Home by Nicole Rose, a companion to her Hudson-based full-service design firm, BNR Interiors, offers egalitarian access to her celebrated sensibility. 

A  curated selection of vintage furniture, custom pieces, and uncommon home accessories fill the shop, which reopens February 1, from a brief hiatus to restock and refresh. For Fisher, the store is more than a retail space—it’s a place to share her distinctive, refined-yet-textured approach with a broader audience, presenting items ranging from $50 to $5,000. She also sees the shop as part of Kinderhook’s growing appeal as a cultural destination. With Home located next to the Kinderhook Bottle Shop in the elegantly restored Knitting Mill building, Fisher will soon host events in collaboration with local businesses. 

“This shop is a way to showcase everything I’ve collected and worked on over the years,” Fisher says. “I wanted to create a destination where people can find something special, whether it’s a reimagined piece of furniture or a small accessory that transforms a room.”

Fisher’s path to interior design was informed by her glamorous early career in fashion, where she worked under Nicola Formichetti as part of Lady Gaga’s styling team. Fisher collaborated on music videos, performances, and editorial shoots for magazines including Vogue and Vanity Fair. “There was no time for rest. It was 24/7,” Fisher recalls. “If it came through [Gaga’s] brain as a possibility, it was our job to make it come to life.”

This emphasis on creative problem-solving and risk-taking was inspiring for Fisher. “For an artist to stay relevant, it’s all about risk,” she says. “You had to stay ahead of trends and think in new ways. That translated directly to what I do now—taking ideas and making them a reality.”

After two years with Gaga, Fisher transitioned into interior design, working for the luxury home decore company One Kings Lane, where she managed celebrity-focused design projects, including work on Lucy Liu’s New York City apartment and Bobbi Brown’s hotel, The George. In 2013, she launched her design firm, BNR Interiors, which has earned national attention and features in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and Rue magazine.

Photo by Yellow House Productions

Fisher emphasizes a highly customized approach to her design and renovation projects. “I don’t like to point to a picture in a magazine and say, ‘That’s what you get,’” she explains. “We source from all over the world—Italy, France, Texas—and rethink pieces to make them unique. That might mean adding new legs to a chair, lacquering a desk, or reupholstering something to give it new life.”

This philosophy bleeds over into the offerings at Home, where she encourages shoppers to take a chance on something that stands out. An emblematic example of this, she says, is a strange but classy marble-topped antique cigar table, with a rest for a burning stogie in the center. “It’s such a funny piece,” Fisher says. “People ask what it’s for, and when I explain, they love it—even if they don’t smoke cigars. You could put a candle in it. It’s a conversation starter.”

Opening a brick-and-mortar store in Kinderhook was a practical decision as well as a creative one. “I was teetering on hoarder status,” Fisher jokes, referring to the inventory she had amassed over years of sourcing items for clients. The shop allows her to display these pieces while also giving locals and weekenders a new outlet for quality retail therapy.

Fisher, her husband and young son relocated full-time to Kinderhook during the pandemic, a shift that coincided with increasing demand for local design services. “We’ve gone from 30 percent of our projects being local to 80 percent,” she says. Many of her recent projects involve historic renovations, a particular area of interest for Fisher. She recently finished up jobs in Hudson and is actively working on large-scale homes in the Berkshires and Litchfield County. 

“Historic renovations allow us to dive deep into the architecture and history of a space,” she explains. “I love preserving as much as we can while making the home functional for modern life. It’s a challenge, but it’s incredibly rewarding to see a 200-year-old building feel updated yet timeless.”

Alongside Home’s bigger ticket items Fisher makes a point of filling the store with smaller items, like vases, dishware, and pillows. “It’s about giving people access to what we do, even if they’re not hiring us for a full project,” she says.

The store also provides a resource for existing clients, who can select finishing touches for their homes directly. “It’s the cherry on top of any project,” Fisher explains. “We wanted to create a space where people can find everything they need to make their home feel complete.”

As Fisher looks ahead, she says she’s focused on blending creativity with practicality, whether designing custom furniture, restoring historic homes, or curating pieces for her shop. “At the end of the day, it’s about the details,” she says. “Those little things make all the difference.”