There is a touch of the retro nightclub about the advertising guru Cindy Gallop’s flat. It is not just that she has set up home in what was once the locker room of New York’s Chelsea YMCA, or that the space has been turned into a vast, open-plan apartment in which she can ride around on her Gucci bicycle, or even that P Diddy shot one of his more debauched videos here. No, it is perhaps because Gallop was the worse for wear when she came up with the design inspiration.

“I was three sheets to the wind in the Glamour Bar in China,” she says. “I looked around and thought to myself, ‘I’d like to live somewhere like this.’ I said to the designers that, when night falls, I want to feel like I’m in a bar in Shanghai.”

That was interpreted an all-black gloss finish. “Initially, I was horrified at the idea,” says Gallop, “but the design team said the flat was big enough to take it, and that a gloss-black would reflect the light and make all my art and my belongings really pop – and it does. People visit and don’t realise that the apartment is all black until I tell them.”

Gallop is something of a collector, and her house looks like one of the city’s chicest independent galleries. There are sculptures by Peter Gronquist (including a Gucci chainsaw, Chanel AK47, Nintendo duck-hunt pistol and, on its way, a stuffed gold Gucci alligator), paintings by the contemporary British artists Paul Richards and David Piddock, and all sorts of oriental antiquities.

The star of the show, however, is the shoes, which sit on shelves that run the length of the flat, lit like precious museum pieces. “I have always displayed my shoes, wherever I’ve lived,” says Gallop. “It started when I was a student in Oxford, with a pair of red Bally stilettos that I put on my mantelpiece for a week before I wore them. Many of these are from my Tom Ford-worship era, when he was designing for Gucci and YSL. I have more than 200 pairs. I bought most of my wardrobe from both labels, too. ” Does she have a favourite pair? “Oh no, I couldn’t choose – I love them all too much.”

Clearly, Gallop takes her role as a postSex and the City fortysomething woman seriously. There is even a hint of the Samantha about her: “My sofas are covered in fake chinchilla – best experienced rolling around on them naked.”

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Specials

Times recommends

• Interior design: It's time to end our craze for open-plan living
• How to make cool bedrooms for kids
• Inside Zaha Hadid's East London apartment