Interior designer and television personality Nate Berkus covers Hamptons magazine's annual Home & Garden Issue. Inside the glossy, Berkus opens up to Vie Luxe founder and CEO Marjorie Gubelmann about spending time in the Hamptons, upcoming projects and much more.
Marjorie Gubelmann: Tell me a little about your design philosophy.
Nate Berkus: My philosophy has always been that your home should tell your story, and the way you do that is through the choices you make and the things you surround yourself with, whether it's somebody who has an amazing collection of porcelain from their grandmother but wants to live with it in a different, fresh environment, or people who are starting out and literally have nothing. My youngest client, Cyrus Raein, otherwise known as Marjorie's son, had a very strong hand in his bedroom in the city. It pushed my limits [laughs].
MG: You recently got married. Will we be seeing more of you and Jeremiah in the Hamptons?
NB: Definitely. You're the perfect hostess because the way you entertain is exactly how I would entertain if I had a home in the Hamptons. People can come and go. No one shows up unannounced—which I think is incredibly rude and inappropriate—but when you are invited, you're all in. Everybody hangs out, lunches right by the pool, helps out. We come back from a weekend at your home feeling completely restored.
MG: That's one of the beautiful things about the Hamptons—the more the merrier. I use a lot of the collection you did for Target at my Southampton house—the towels, bowls, and tabletop; they're perfect out here. Do you think of people in resorts like this when you're coming up with your designs?
NB: Thanks, Marge. I'm inspired by everywhere I go, and I spend a lot of time in the Hamptons in the summer. It definitely factors in. When you don't have your own home in the Hamptons, one of the things that is a constant source of anxiety and stress is getting a great host gift. When somebody invites you to their home, and they already went to Trader Joe's in Centre Island and got you the barbecue materials, and you're being swanned around like we are when staying at Chez Gubelmann, what do you bring? Pull things from my collection, like a stack of new beach towels—be generous, they're not that expensive and come in a million designs.
MG: What other projects or collaborations are you working on?
NB: The Nate Berkus fabric collection is sold at Calico Corners; there are lots of solids but also beautiful block prints, linens, and heavy cottons. There are more than 50 fabrics in that collection. Another line with Jo-Ann fabric will launch this month, which is exciting because the fabrics are geared toward people who are making things on their own. That is fun for me to see. I get all of these posts on Instagram (@NateBerkus) of people who are using my fabrics in ways I wouldn't have thought of. I remember a woman who took two of my runners from Target and made a stair runner; that was genius, because I just installed a stair runner in my home and probably paid 70 times what she paid.
· Hamptons magazine [Official]