Make That Time Fun Again Hat
Can you style a bedroom as you would a pair of old Levi's? Fashion designer Chris Benz thinks so. "Color, proportion, the combination of things—building a look is a lot like layering a room," he says. "It's all about that mix, and making it feel authentic and pulled together."
Since purchasing a 19th-century farmhouse four years ago in Bellport, New York, with his partner, lawyer Peter Toumbekis, Benz has been renovating and outfitting its many rooms with aplomb. You could say that his fashion background has served him well. Even without any formal training in the home decor space, the former senior vice president of design for womenswear and Crewcuts at J.Crew has always found a delightful ease applying his aesthetic vision to interiors. Throughout his various roles in fashion design—prior to J.Crew, he worked for Marc Jacobs, founded his own eponymous womenswear collection, and was the creative director at Bill Blass—he had often dabbled in interiors-related projects, including a wallpaper series with the brand Wallshoppe.
The house in Bellport is the fifth home that he's designed for himself and Toumbekis. He also oversaw the earlier gut renovation of their four-story Brooklyn townhouse, a similarly striking but more urban reflection of his penchant for an impactful color palette. "Whenever we move somewhere, I need to put my stamp on it," he says.
Before the pandemic, they were looking for a weekend retreat and were drawn to Bellport, a village on the North Fork of Long Island with all the charms of a bucolic seaside town but the convenient perk of easy access to New York City. The quaint gallery- and shop-lined main street turns more rural as it stretches out, winding past centuries-old houses and cottages. It was the promise of a more discreet counterpart to the Hamptons—understated, but rich with history and age—that drew Benz and Toumbekis to the area in the first place. "The Hamptons has a whole 'see and be seen' vibe," Toumbekis notes. "This area is where the people who don't care about that—or don't want to be seen—come instead."
Initially, Benz had enjoyed the process of renovating on weekends only; the schedule allowed him time to consider his design choices before returning a week later with a refreshed perspective. But everything changed during the pandemic: The couple sold their home in Brooklyn and moved to Bellport full-time; Benz focused on turning a getaway home into a year-round abode. He also found his hobby increasingly becoming his passion. Last year, Benz pivoted into professional home design with the launch of Cult Projects, a top-to-bottom concierge service for jobs of all scopes and sizes. "Decorating is a huge part of it, but we also do home organization and seasonal change-outs," he says. "If you want a vintage Land Rover in your garage when you pull up Memorial Day weekend, I know exactly where to pick it up."
Inevitably, he puts his stylish touch on an interior. From the outside, his own cedar-shingled residence bears all the trappings of a classic Victorian farmhouse. A peek through the front door, however, reveals a colorfully idiosyncratic sanctuary layered with furniture and objects culled from various decades—an effortlessly refined blend of past and present.
Though the name "the Oaks" was original to the 1886 house and three-acre property, Benz was quick to embrace the designation as his own. Customized matchbooks in faded turquoise are casually strewn about the house (in quantities suggesting that guests should perhaps pocket a few), while a square wooden placard bearing the house's name hangs next to the front door. Benz commissioned both projects from vendors on Etsy, a longtime trade secret of his for sourcing what he refers to as "micro-contractors."
Benz has always had an innate sense of color—bold palettes have been his trademark—yet he maintains that even the most color-averse can successfully venture beyond neutrals by creating a logical progression from one room to the next. "I don't think people should be as afraid of using color as they often are; just make sure there's a flow—a cohesiveness—so that the colors make sense and it doesn't feel like a fun house," he says.
In his own home, he practices what he preaches. Upstairs, a cluster of bedrooms in shades of robin's-egg blue, smoky green, pale salmon, and a cozy yellow blends fluidly and without preciousness. Several rooms are accented with contemporary details (like the highlighter-yellow ceiling of the downstairs sitting room) yet convey a lived-in warmth, largely thanks to the artful mashup of furnishings. "I love that flea-market vibe of paintings leaning up against the wall on the floor," Benz says. "By layering them that way, as opposed to just hanging one above the fireplace, you create a kind of electricity in a space."
Post-lockdown, the couple is more inclined to host friends at home rather than go out. Throughout the summer and early fall, the screened back porch overlooking the verdant gardens and a slender swimming pool becomes the hub where friends gather for lazy weekend lunches of icebox-cold fried chicken and a boozy take on iced sweet tea. When the weather cools and the gatherings migrate indoors to the house's cozier areas, Benz relies on two strategically placed bar setups to encourage flow and movement while guests mingle. He and Toumbekis keep the bars stocked and the agenda open, a knowing tactic considering how frequently their daytime gatherings have turned into evening revelries, and sometimes all-night affairs.
To friends like Stefan Beckman, the production designer and art director, Benz's move into interior and home design makes logical sense. "It's a perfect fit to look at interiors from a fashion standpoint: embracing colors, embracing textures, all those sorts of things," says Beckman, who resides part-time in Bellport and owns the nearby Bellport General store. "It's fun to see him give life to his own house."
Given Benz and Toumbekis's predilection for entertaining, there's also a 625-square-foot cottage on the property for lucky overnight visitors, who might wake up to fresh eggs from the couple's heirloom hens. For everyone else, there are plenty of matchbooks to snatch—a perfect souvenir of a visit to the charmingly refreshed Oaks.
This story originally appeared in the September 2021 issue of ELLE Decor. SUBSCRIBE
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Source: https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/house-interiors/a37183343/chris-benz-long-island-house/
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