When I decided last year to embark on gut renovating a Brooklyn apartment for my growing family, the first thing I thought about was the kitchen. I love to cook, and I love to host, and I wanted something different from the one that had been installed in our current place, of which a very chic friend of mine (French, naturally) once remarked "how American" it looked. There is, of course, no one kind of "American" kitchen, but I took her comment to mean that this one-with its generic Shaker cabinets and their decorative door pulls-looked as though it could have belonged on the set of a 1990s sitcom.
Space in any Brooklyn apartment is precious, and mine is no different. I wanted my new kitchen to be economical and low-fuss but highly practical too. It needed to possess a simple kind of beauty. There should be natural wood, minimal cabinet pulls, and a round table where the family could gather, with a pendant light hanging overhead. But I also required something harder to capture: the spirit of a Scandinavian kitchen (or, as they say in Denmark, køkken) something beyond specific design choices.
This story is from the November 2024 edition of Elle Decor US.
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This story is from the November 2024 edition of Elle Decor US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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If you must go to the Hamptons, however-because it is devilishly good fun, after all-you may notice an apparently modest, low-slung cottage on Sag Harbor's Main Street and think, with a comfortable sort of feeling, Now that is how a house should look. Nestled amid the Botox bars, helipads, and club-staurants, it could almost set the sordid world aright both a rebuke and a solution to the chaos that surrounds it. A real home.
