East Hampton Style

The set design for the HBO movie Grey Gardens is quite lovely. It captures the essence of Hamptons style perfectly. The great summer houses, called cottages, that were built in the early 1900's and many of which still stand today, evoke a gracious lifestyle that is captivating.


Being summer houses, the homes were furnished in a more casual way, often reflecting the "fun" side of the socially prominent and wealthy people who inhabited them. These houses were places to let your hair down, to relax, to play.


The Beale ladies who owned Grey Gardens were two such people. Their summer cottage in East Hampton was their play house.
Production Designer Kalina Ivanov depicts this with lovely attention to detail. There is another interview with her HERE and is well worth the read.


As you look around this living room, you see such a wonderful collection of art objects like the little sculpture of the torso, the faded oriental carpets, the precious little side tables, the plant placed in a bird cage, odd little decor touches that are very feminine and very bohemian, very much like the ladies of this house.


The wall paper used throughout the house is oriental in feeling, hand painted perhaps. The floral draperies are very much like the type used in English country houses, very Colefax and Fowler if you will.
What's so hard to imagine is how the house got to the squalor those ladies lived in. Like when was the first empty cat food can thrown in a corner, and who threw it there, and why didn't anyone pick it up and put it in the trash? Where did the furniture go? Did they have to sell their lovely things to survive? How do you go from wearing lovely clothes and jewels, from being so beautifully groomed, to becoming those unkempt tragedies? How many years did it take for a house to die?


And all those cats! The day I pulled into the driveway on my bicycle, and listened to the house to tell me if anything alive was in it, I did not see one of those cats! It was only after Edie spoke to me, did they start to appear from every corner, almost as if summoned by this magic good witch. She really did look like she stepped out of an enchanted forest in a Grimm fairy tale.

Did this glimpse of the remnants of the draperies help inspire
the set design of Kalina Ivanov?

Edie kept this list of the names of all the cats

I love the lipstick red Chinoiserie dining room chairs, again a great pop of bohemian pizazz.


It is so heart wrenching to see the house as imagined by Kalina Ivanov for the movie. Filmed mainly in Toronto, she says creating the outdoor sets of the house was a huge accomplishment. There aren't many existing old photos that depict the house as it was in its happy days, still intact, perhaps as intact as the minds of the women who lived there were then. So Kalina used her imagination, creating a charming and layered feminine and bohemian atmosphere.

That lovely dining room as it was when the Beale ladies lost their minds

Each detail is lovingly attended to. There are signs of lives lived, of pretty things accumulated, but without overt ostentatious displays of wealth: Hamptons Style - or at least as it was before the influx of newly created wealthy people of the last twenty years to this once exclusive playground.
My favorite rooms in the set design, are the bedrooms (there are 14 of them at Grey Gardens!). These are the rooms every woman could live in. The colors, the wallpaper, the bedding, the lamps, the rugs - its all so charming.
I wonder if this is meant to be Little Edie's bedroom.


Maybe it's meant to be the mother's room, Big Edie's room,


Again, the hand painted wallpaper is exquisite without screaming a rich girl lives here. I love the detail of the kimono hanging.
The headboard is posh, and I am just loving the draperies again.


The sweet tufted headboard never showed up again in the photos taken of Big Edie as she took to her bed in the squalor.


Here's another bedroom. Maybe this is meant to be Little Edie's. It has a younger feeling.
I love the art deco bed, again something a little fashion forward for its time, something an artistic person would purchase for an otherwise traditional home. The Chinese lantern and poster to the right of it are very bohemian touches, as are the colors of the pillows on the bed. The skirted side table is lovely.


The needlepoint chair is spectacular! And I love peeking into the wardrobe.


Little Edie may have lived in a demented house near the end of her time at Grey Gardens, but she still kept up with the social graces of writing notes, making little presents for people, and also of getting notes from people.
Here's a note she got from Jackie along with a clipping telling how mad Jackie was when Edie sold the house to Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee.


It just confuses me that the whole Bouvier clan neglected those ladies.
Lee Radziwell was interviewed somewhere recently, maybe Vogue, about this movie coming out. She said she loved and accepted the two Edies, was not ashamed of them. But I still don't understand why they didn't provide basic housekeeping for them.

Kalina Ivanov, brilliant designer of the sets for Grey Gardens

The Set Design for Grey Gardens - Dear Sally Quinn

I think the set design for the HBO movie Grey Gardens is breathtaking.

I Spy the detail of the magazine with Jackie on the cover!

Kalina Ivanov is the production designer, and the rooms she has put together are so layered and gorgeous, they become a co-star of the movie.
You can read more on this terrific blog dedicated to Grey Gardens HERE

This is the foyer. Classic Hamptons style all the way. The staircase is beautiful.

This is the living room. I love the layering of the furnishings and accessories, and the color of the walls.

Here's another view of the foyer. The little bench is so sweet.


Here is Big Edie, as she lived the last thirty years of her life, with her portrait as she lived the first part of her life.

Here's how Kalina Ivanov used the portrait in the set design. Isn't this room just lovely? I especially love the draperies, which look like a linen fabric by Kravitz.

Here's the portrait again, very much as it was seen in the photo above with Big Edie. I love the faded colors of the walls. They are so nuanced and rich, much more so than the dreary palette you discern from all the black and white photos we see of Grey Gardens.


Here's Little Edie in the house in the 1970's.

Dear Sally Quinn,
If you are reading please, please let a photo shoot happen at Grey Gardens soon! We all would love to see the magic you've worked there. xo xo

The Cat Ladies

It was sometime between 1972 and 1973. I had always wanted to go to East Hampton. Of course I had been to the working class beaches on Long Island closer to the city. But I had only read about The Hamptons.
So I got a job as a waitress for the summer at a place on Main Beach in East Hampton called the Sea Spray Inn. It was a grueling job, because they made us use old style large trays to service the tables. The staff lived in a two story Dickensonian shack behind the restaurant, something they called The Help House.
Early in the season it was cold and damp, and the huge restaurant smelled of damp and fish.
I didn't last the summer. I was fired for not wearing a bra, told I was too Greenwich Village.
But I was in love with The Hamptons. I had bought a junky beach bicylce, and rode up and down those towering hedge row lanes for hours and hours.
So I found another job, and crashed on some other kids' couch for the rest of the summer.



One of the places I stumbled upon was this ramshackle house on Lily Pond Lane, right on the ocean near Georgica Beach. It looked abandoned, and I loved to go inside abandoned houses, to poke around.
I pulled into the driveway on my bike, and straddled it for a long ten minutes, trying to feel the vibe of the house, like was it empty, were there critters in there, etc. I sang and hollered a couple of you-hoos. When I was convinced no one was living in the house, human or otherwise, I climbed off my bike.


"Hey you there! What are you doing here?!"
A woman's voice! I nearly peed myself.
I yelled back, that I was sorry to intrude, that I thought the house was abandoned and just wanted to explore.
"Does this look like an abandoned house?!" she screeched.
Why yes ma'm it does. I apologized again, and started to back my bike away from the house.
"Wait a minute!" she yelled.
And then she came out.
A crazy looking woman with a scarf tied on her head.
"I'm Valorie ma'm."
"I'm litte Edie and I live here with my mother."



We talked some more, and I commented on all the cats, that they must be huge cat lovers. You could smell cat pee from the road.


All that summer I visited little Edie. I didn't see her mother, because little Edie said her mother was bed ridden, but I heard her! She often yelled for little Edie to come in and do something, get something.
What did we talk about? I bitched about getting fired. Edie said I had great tits and should never wear a bra. We talked about being in show business. She sang and danced around. I told her I was a show business kid, and she would egg me on to sing and dance with her. I told her about this guy who played the piano at my new job, at a bar and restaurant called Stephan's Talkhouse in Amagansett. The guy played alot of show tunes, and was super sweet. His name was Peter Allen. I told her she should come and hang out there with me, and she laughed and said goodness no, she could never leave her mother alone for one minute.


The summer passed too quickly for me. I stayed on until after Labor Day. I often brought cat food for little Edie's cats, because they looked like two poor old ladies living in this shit hole. I asked them if they had enough to eat, that they better not to be eating cat food for Gods sake, that I'd bring them some groceries.
Near the time I was getting ready to go back to the city, I met the mother. She was out on the back deck, and little Edie introduced me. Mother looked like a witch, all crazy white hair flying. And she didn't smell very good either. She bossed little Edie around alot, and after a while I felt uncomfortable, and said my goodbyes. I asked little Edie if they stayed at the beach all winter, and she said where else would they go. I said God you must freeze your asses off. Little Edie said they stayed in bed for most of the winter, and they had their fur coats.
I gave her a scarf, and I gave the mother a hat, and said I'd see them next summer. I didn't get back to East Hampton until nearly ten years later, and by that time everything had changed.


I got a menial job at The Museum of Modern Art once I was back in the city. I started as a clerk typist in the Film Department, The Circulating Collection to be exact. I was low girl on the totem pole, hand maiden to the curators and egg heads. I liked the job well enough, if only to go to work at MOMA everyday. They also paid for my tutuion to film school, and I did advance my position.


One day one of the egg heads brought in a couple of hippie dippie guys in to meet me at my typewriter. They had just made a documentary about two old ladies in East Hampton.
I had often talked about the remarkable mother and daughter and their dilapidated cat house. Well those hippies turned out to be the Maysles brothers, and those ladies turned out to be in their movie Grey Gardens. They asked me alot of questions, and I kind of felt weird taliking about my friends. I told the brothers I hoped they didn't make the ladies look stupid and freakish in the movie. They assured me they loved them as much as I did.



Of course I found out all about Grey Gardens then, there was so much press. I felt kind of stupid that I didn't know that little Edie was Jackie O's cousin! Like many others I thought it odd that little Edie and her mother came from wealth and society. How could their family let them live that way? Of course I knew that little Edie was kooky, and the mother was senile, and you couldn't tell them what to do, but still, I would have sent a cleaning lady over there.


Now Grey Gardens is in the news again. HBO has a movie premiering this Saturday April 18. Drew Barrymore plays little Edie, and Jessica Lange plays her mother, co starring with that fabulous house.


Little Eddie sold Grey Gardens when her mother died. She sold it to Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee. Sadly there are no magazine photo spreads of the inside of the house. Sally Quinn purchased it from little Edie for $220,000, a steal of deal even back then. Little Edie sold it to Sally Quinn because Sally remarked on the beauty of the house.


I'm showing photos of the Quinn-Bradley home in Washington DC. It's how I imagine they would furnish Grey Gardens.


The premiere of the HBO movie happened a few days ago in East Hampton, and the party was held at Grey Gardens. I saw some photos on a site where you have to buy them from the photogrpaher, and they are mostly party people shots.


But he had a few shots he labeled "atmosphere" that gave you a glimpse of the interior of the house.


It was very plain, very under decorated. Still I'd love to style a photo shoot there.



The Bradleys tell a funny story about the house. A few years ago there was about ten days of rain in August in East Hampton. And guess what? The renovated house reeked of cat pee! They had to leave! Once the wood dried out again, it stopped smelling.


I feel so tender towards the two Edies and towards Grey Gardens. The summer I found them was my first summer love affair with East Hampton. And you never forget your first.


I always wanted to go back to that cat house.
By the time I bought my own little house in East Hampton, the ladies were gone, and the house was repaired.


But I swear you could still smell cat pee from Lily Pond Lane as you rode by on your bike.


I lived around the corner from a club called Reno Sweeney, and I saw a poster there after Grey Gardens the documentary came out, with little Edie headlining a cabaret act! I saw the poster after the fact, so I didn't get to see her. I really would have loved to see her show, and tell her I was sorry about her mother dying.