passion project

For fashion designer Adam Lippes, home is a bucolic retreat in the Berkshires filled with objects he has lovingly collected over the years

- DAVID FOXLEY

Right here," declares Adam Lippes of his preferred perch in the Massachusetts Berkshires home he has painstakingly refined over the last two decades. Tucked into a pile of needlepoint pillows beside a crackling fire, three doting Labradoodles stirring at his feet, the fashion designer makes it easy to understand why.

In 2004, having recently resigned as global creative director of Oscar de la Renta, Lippes was looking for a bucolic retreat outside New York City. After spending endless work-adjacent weekends in the Hamptons, which left him "shell-shocked," he says, finding "a place of peace, not a place to socialize" was a top priority. He was preparing to put in an offer on a falling-down 300-acre working farm in the Hudson Valley when a friend in the Berkshires encouraged him to consider looking a bit farther north; an extraordinary property had just come up for sale. "The land, the views-it just got me," recalls Lippes, who put in a full price offer that very day. He had finally found the restorative idyll-cum-creative laboratory that would see him through the launch of his own successful fashion brand.

Dating to 1920, the English Tudor-style main house, named Casa Sandra in honor of his late decorator mother, was built by a noted printmaker and incorporates an older barn (now the summer living room) that was on the property. Currently Lippes's primary residence, the four-bedroom structure, which he shares with his partner, cannabis entrepreneur Alexander Farnsworth, is nestled within a generously sized, parklike setting.