// COMFORT ZONE
In a preview of her new book Dream Spaces, celebrated interior designer Victoria Hagan offers an exclusive look at her designs for a gorgeous Hamptons beach house
In a preview of her new book Dream Spaces, celebrated interior designer Victoria Hagan offers an exclusive look at her designs for a gorgeous Hamptons beach house.
Quietly yet emphatically recalibrating our attitudes toward design since she began her career 25 years ago, Victoria Hagan has become one of the most influential and celebrated interior designers in the country. Although she makes a point of steering clear of any one design vernacular, she has nimbly honed her own unmistakable sense of style—one that embraces a distinctly American sensibility and emanates from a modern way of living. She has also shown that she’s at ease in most any context by crafting restrained, tailored, and spectacularly beautiful interiors in homes that range from a historic townhouse in Manhattan to an oceanfront family compound in Florida to a modern home on a mountain in Aspen, Colorado, to the official residence of the vice president of the United States in Washington, Dc—among so many others.
Her gift, Hagan says in the introduction to her newest book,
“I TAPPED INTO LOWKEY QUALITIES ABOUT THE HAMPTONS— FAMILY, NATURE, OCEAN BREEZES, THE QUALITY OF LIGHT.”
Dream Spaces (to be published by Rizzoli this October), “is the ability to coax opportunity out of the process.” Her aim, she explains, is always to make her clients’ dreams a reality. In doing so, she relies on her surefire instincts to bring a multiplicity of elements—context, materials, lifestyle, attitudes—into a flawless whole. “I look at homes as they are and imagine what they might be,” says the awardwinning designer, who is also known for VH Collections—her handcrafted American-made furniture, fabric, and rug lines—which debuted in 2002 and are available at designer showrooms across the country. “I do this both in my career as well as for what I call ‘my sport.’ I love to find the beauty in things, no matter how far down you need to dig.” As such, distilled through Hagan’s rarefied lens, each new space—while invariably grounded in classicism—is unique and often exuberant, with traditional elements mingling artfully with modern ones in unexpected yet reassuring ways.
Like all of the extraordinary interiors in the dreamy getaway homes in her new book, the rooms she crafted for this soulful beachside abode are crisp and clean, with a timeless American spirit. They also effortlessly blend luxury with a relaxed sense of comfort—which are additional inevitable by-products of Hagan’s rigorous and thoughtful approach to design. “People think design is about decorating,” she says. “But for me, it’s about all these other ideas, like the feel, the mood, the setting, and how the clients want to live.” And in this inviting home perched high on an oceanfront bluff, where it seems you can see from Southampton to Montauk, the emphasis is on comfort, family, and the beach. victoriahagan.com