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NEWSDAY June 26, 2003 How the Southampton Half Lives This is the House of Musts. Designer Alexa Hampton walked into the cavernous living room, with its cinematic windows overlooking a lush green garden path that ends at a Roman bust, and thought, “This room must be green.”  She wanted the outdoors at the Southampton estate to continue flowing indoors. Design company Ingrao Inc.’s creative director, Randy Kemper, said his team looked at the mansion’s entry hall and said, “This area must be fun.”  He and his partners wanted to suffuse the area with “tangy color.”  After all, it is a beach house – if a huge, luxurious one.  They painted the walls chartreuse, and, instead of covering the twin Regency settees with predictable velvet, they used pink leopard fabric with sea-pearl trim. Scott Sanders took one look at the outdoor pool area and said, “This must be red. Fire engine red.”  He said he wanted to do something bold to pick up the poolside brick but also contrast with the serene green of the landscaping.  He took risks – for instance, he bought vintage metal chairs at the local Georgica Creek Antiques, and then sent them to Maaco, the car-paint company, and had them coated in red car paint.  “They’d never done that before,” Sanders said.  “I thought, ‘They’re going to be outside, and I don’t want them to rust.’” It’s any decorator’s job to decide on Musts, but at this year’s Hampton Designer Showhouse, the 20 room designers seemed particularly decisive.  The showhouse opens to the public on Sunday and stays open through July 27.  It is sponsored by House & Garden magazine, but the proceeds benefit Southampton Hospital.  Last year the event drew more than 10,000 visitors and raised more than half a million dollars.  Because the setting is a beach house, it seemed few designers could resist slipping in seashells.  Finding them can be like a scavenger hunt.  A shell-pattern fabric on a pillow here.  Shells in the fireplace box there.  Seashells placed strategically on furniture everywhere. And then there are surprises.  One can be found in the upstairs linen closet, transformed into the “petite salon” and whispered among the house’s designers to be the most O.T.T. – that’s for “Over the Top” – room.  There is a nodder – a Buddha with a nodding head – in the hallway leading to the pool area.  And designer Darren Henault’s downstairs bath and sitting room area features a flourish that might make some a little nervous.  Hint: It’s not the faux suede on the walls, or the limestone and tiles on every square inch of the bathroom.  It’s the photographs. (That’s all we’ll say; it is a surprise.)  “It’s OK for people to get a little nervous on occasion,” Henault reassured.  Back in the cavernous living room, Hampton described her decorating strategy.  Most designer sin a showhouse choose between two options.  “Do you want to do something a little bit zany and eye-catching?  Or do you want to decorate the way you do professionally?”  She chose the latter.  She drew a footprint of the room and filled it in on paper first.  “It’s like a map.  Then I can go around the room and plug things in,” she said. She borrowed white canvas chairs from her own apartment, as well as the twin table lamps that flank one sofa.  “My husband said, ‘Honey…’” she said of Pavlos, a corporate strategist for Merrill Lynch.  “When I say, ‘Honey, I’m taking some chairs and our lamps,’ he’s just a little muddled by it.”  She also borrowed two busts from her mother’s home in Southampton, to tie the living room into the bust at the end of the garden path.  She snagged many of the room’s tchotchkes from Amy Perlin, who has antiques stores in Manhattan and the Hamptons, and she enjoyed juxtaposing the Roman busts and a classic table with something a little bit quirky: Perlin’s mounted fish vertebrae and a tortoise shell.  That way, she said, the room doesn’t look too much like a fake set.  That’s important in a showhouse, she said.  “You don’t want it to lose its ability to seem inahabitable.” Even if only in your dreams.

 

 

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