Grand Ambitions

IN THE PROCESS OF DECORATING HER MILLBROOK, NEW YORK, HOME, FASHION’S DIGITAL QUEEN LEARNED TO INDULGE HER PASSION FOR PRINTS.

- Joyann King

A MERE FOUR MONTHS AFTER MEETING MY now-husband, Jeremy, I found myself stomping through knee-deep snow to check out a big white house on a hill in Millbrook, New York. Boasting 100 acres of fields and woods, two ponds, a creek, and tons of furry residents, the property had a winter coat that left a lot to the imagination. But Jeremy and I were falling in love and feeling just a little bit crazy. I still don’t know why I didn’t immediately run back to my TriBeCa rental. But like all great love stories, the house, which we called Whiskey Ridge, required diving in blindly, headfirst.

A blistering summer day six months later proved to be the end of the honeymoon, both for our relationship and our new home. I cried hysterically on move-in day when we discovered that not only was there no internet in the house, but it was also impossible to run the cables up the mile-long driveway. As the digital editor of Harper’s Bazaar, being offline was career suicide. How did we not think to ask about the Wi-Fi? Country houses, it seems, suffer no fools.

My obsessive interest in interiors and passion for fashion was also sorely outmatched by a complete lack of home-improvement experience—a liability in renovating 7,000 square feet of historic architecture. (The home was an amalgam of three 19th-century structures that had been moved to the site in the 1980s from Syracuse, New York.)

My 13 years as a fashion editor should have prepared me to carefully, meticulously, and tastefully curate a home. But my Pinterest boards were all over the place. Was my vibe rustic, modern, traditional, eclectic, or bohemian? Was my preference for all white or all color? I loved both. I needed help. Not to mention my husband. Had. Opinions. He works in mergers and acquisitions; I was up against a professional.