STYLE SUMMIT

Lauren Santo Domingo enlists Andre Mellone to help fashion a sophisticated ski retreat that defies tired decorative tropes

- DEREK C. BLASBERG

No chalet clichés!" That was the first thing that came to Lauren Santo Domingo's mind when she began envisioning her dream ski house in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The ultimate New York City style setter, cofounder of online fashion emporium Moda Operandi, and artistic director of Tiffany Home already had a list of decor don'ts: "No fur, no bison heads, no stone mantles, no cowboy hats, no fluffy rugs...."

Lauren and her husband, Andrés Santo Domingo, the cofounder of indie music label Mexican Summer, envisioned a version of rusticity that was more masculine, midcentury, contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright than ski bunny. Cowboys out, Le Corbusier in. "I don't know what I like until I see what I don't, so I can do the opposite," says Lauren, who is widely known by just her initials-LSD-nowadays. (Her Instagram handle is @thelsd.) "I had seen too many old houses with great wood get taken down to the studs and turned into a white box. That's when I decided I wanted to lean the other direction."

In 2022, Andrés came across some minimalist, half-moon shaped stools by Green River Project that had been simply stained and topped with a cushion. "The deep, rich stain became the inspiration," Lauren says, adding that a later road trip through Belgium and Holland, which included a stop at Morentz, a workshop that specializes in 20th-century design, made a lasting impression too. Another key moment was meeting AD100 designer Andre Mellone through mutual friend Wes Gordon, the creative director of Carolina Herrera, at a cocktail party after Mellone designed the brand's Madison Avenue store. With his record of creating luxurious, cozy lairs using natural elements (note his handsome reimagining of the lobby at 50 Rockefeller Plaza), Lauren thought he'd be perfect to collaborate on a modernist version of a log cabin. "I wanted to handsand and hand-paint every piece of wood paneling," Lauren smiles. "And we did. Every door, every stair, all of the ceilings."