team work

Amanda Ross Bacon turns to her friend Muriel Brandolini to help breathe new life into an Arts and Crafts cottage in the Hamptons

-  KATE BETTS

COVID brought us together," says designer Muriel Brandolini of her friendship with fashion designer Amanda Ross Bacon. "We had these homes near each other in the Hamptons and because of the six-feet-apart rule, we worked out together on my tennis court with a trainer." The two former stylists found they shared a love of fashion and color, and eventually their conversations turned to decorating. Ross Bacon had been struggling to add her own personality to the nearby late-19th-century Arts and Crafts-style cottage her husband, Zack Bacon, purchased in 2012, two years before they met.

"The place was very masculine," remembers Ross Bacon. "I needed some help to make it more feminine, to add personality." And so she peppered Brandolini with decorating questions, and soon they were working together. But for Brandolini, this job remained like a conversation between friends more than a formal contract between decorator and client.

"I told Amanda, 'I'm going to teach you how to do a house. I will lend you my eyes and you will have to chase people down to get the job done," says Brandolini, whose signature mix of bohemian fabrics, bold colors, and unique artwork graces several Hamptons homes. "It was not really a typical job for me. It was more like shopping with my girlfriend during COVID, to teach her." Brandolini immediately fell in love with the aura of the shingle-clad house with its overhanging eaves, ribbon windows, and Edwina von Gal-designed parterre gardens.