A Modest Hamptons Home. Come Again? (2024)

Whatever you do, Reader, don’t go to the Hamptons. The tiniest shrimp co*cktail in the world will set you back $80, a Gucci boutique stands exactly where the local hardware store should be, and the weekend crowd would sell their mothers (or knock you down on Lily Pond Lane) for the perfect selfie.

If you must go to the Hamptons, however—because it is devilishly good fun, after all—you may notice an apparently modest, low-slung cottage on Sag Harbor’s Main Street and think, with a comfortable sort of feeling, Now that is how a house should look. Nestled amid the Botox bars, helipads, and club-staurants, it could almost set the sordid world aright—both a rebuke and a solution to the chaos that surrounds it. A real home.

Not that it always looked like one. The young financier Alex Rosenfield saw the rough outline of an English Arts and Crafts–movement cottage in the undistinguished facade of the builder-grade bungalow from the 1920s. To amplify and execute his vision, Rosenfield drafted longtime friend and ELLE DECOR A-List designer Nick Olsen, an old soul committed to placing his generation-defining talents, like his design heroes before him, in service to his clients’ tastes and preferences. “This is not a traditional vacation house or a stage set,” Olsen says. “It is Alex’s home for half of each year or more. We dreamed up so many exciting schemes, sourced beautiful objects, and developed some seriously sky’s-the-limit ideas—but they all had to function.”

Channeling the great decorators of the 20th century, Olsen conjured an unusually sophisticated but hardworking interior that transcends any single stylistic idiom, period, or geographic association, serving as a sympathetic vessel for Rosenfield’s way of living and for his eras-spanning collection of art and furniture—not to mention his sheepadoodle, Poppy.

Early on, the pair worked together to find the perfect spot for a beloved Elger Esser photograph that proved too large to display in previous abodes. They decided on the eat-in kitchen, where the work presides over merry scenes of waffle making and impromptu après-pool dance parties. After seeing the heights of artistry achieved by decorative painter Agustin Hurtado in the dining room, which is lined with a glorious grid of faux buffalo-horn-and-ivory paneling, Rosenfield requested more fantastical surfaces. A desk in the study was drenched in galactic blue porphyry, while two co*cktail tables in the living room were reimagined in a faux tortoiseshell.

It is the living room, a vaulted, ticking stripe–covered barge of a space, that best represents the home’s complex mix of ingredients. A vintage fur-covered sofa anchoring one side of the room was the first object Rosenfield collected for the house; the pine cabinets flanking the fireplace, designed by Danish architect Martin Nyrop in the 1920s, were the last. A Wifredo Lam drawing inscribed to Rosenfield’s grandparents hangs above the salvaged neoclassical mantel, which heroically replaced a demotic brick construction. Contemporary art, antique silver, and Craftsman pottery regularly adorn it.

Art Deco side chairs by French architect Jean-Charles Moreux (“treated,” as Rosenfield says, “with just the smallest amount of wax to keep them safe”) direct the flow between a games table and the adjacent dining room. Underfoot, a custom rug unites four distinct conversation zones and expands upon the French Deco themes. “This place has become a refuge where I can gather my family and friends, as well as my favorite things,” Rosenfield says.

Olsen is included in this group and happily plays the role, today, of occasional houseguest. Could there be any better evidence of a successful collaboration? “It’s all love,” says Olsen. “Alex knows what he wants, but he also listens, appreciates the process, and loves getting the details right.” When the light shines just so, the Gallic and Nordic elements blur and generate a synthesis that recalls the Swedish Grace design movement.

So singular is the place that, after a glass or two of chilled rosé, you might be forgiven for floating away to a different dimension altogether—somewhere far beyond the local bay and away from the summer’s madding crowd, like a traveler drifting through time and space on the Danish Royal Barge. If you must go to the Hamptons, go like this.

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE