Designer & Tastemaker

Aerin Lauder

A designer, tastemaker, and working mother of two, Aerin Lauder is a modern-day style icon. Committed to living life more beautifully, she founded the luxury lifestyle brand AERIN in 2012. With a love for interiors and a talent for creating warm, inviting spaces, Aerin’s elegant, effortless aesthetic reflects her unique upbringing. As she says, “Beauty is my heritage, but home and accessories are my passion. There was an opportunity in the market for a lifestyle brand based on feminine, modern, and effortless products with strong heritage and storytelling. I decided to launch AERIN and make the whole concept of beauty part of the way we live today.” Aerin brings ease and beauty into all aspects of life and, as a dedicated philanthropist, into the lives of others. 

Aerin is an Elective Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a member of The Chairman’s Council.  She serves on the board of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, The Boys’ Club of New York, Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League and God’s Love We Deliver. Aerin is a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art. For over 10 years, Aerin served as a member of the board of the Estée Lauder Companies, until she rotated off for another family member’s term. In 2013, God’s Love We Deliver presented Aerin with the Golden Heart Award for Lifetime Achievement, and most recently she received the Business and Entrepreneurship Award from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Get to know the 2023/2024 Hamptons Innovator,

Lisa Perry

Lisa Perry grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with Marimekko in her bedroom, a Saarinen-filled living room and a two-tone orange shag rug in her family room. She has fond memories of a childhood filled with a focus on fashion, art and design; her mother founded an art gallery and her father created drip paintings in their basement while operating the family’s textile business. She moved to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and graduated with a textile degree.

Lisa is a passionate collector of 1960’s vintage couture fashion and art. In 2007, she started her own fashion and home accessories brand to reflect the spirit of the ‘60s, incorporating designs composed of clean lines, geometric shapes and bold colors. Each year Lisa would produce a limited edition collection in collaboration with an artist or foundation – namely Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Robert Indiana and Leo Villareal. Her signature style is also embodied in her interior design, a longtime passion chronicled in her book, Lisa Perry Fashion Homes Design, published by Assouline.

Lisa is also a lifelong advocate for women’s rights with decades of support for women’s organizations. This advocacy has come full circle with the creation of Onna House. A Japanese modernist 1960s residence in the center of East Hampton, Onna House is a sanctuary filled with art, furniture, and objects by women artists and designers exclusively. With a dual mission to support and create visibility for these artists and to provide a gallery space to display their work, Lisa combines her passions under one roof to carefully curate the private home and studio. Onna House acts as a space for women artists to engage and collaborate and for collectors to discover new work.

Get to know the 2022 Hamptons Innovator,

Lee Skolnick

Lee H. Skolnick is the founding Principal and Lead Designer of SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership, an internationally renowned design firm that integrates architecture, exhibition and communication design, and education. A resident of the east end since 1978, Lee now makes Sag Harbor his year-round home. In addition to award-winning projects in Bulgaria, China, Luxembourg, the Caribbean, Turkey and other international locales, SKOLNICK’s Hamptons projects are varied and numerous. They include The Church, The East Hampton Library, The Children’s Museum of the East End, Guild Hall, the Longhouse Reserve, many of the local historical societies as well as a wide array of award-winning private residences. In addition to applying his philosophy-based interpretive design and planning services to a broad range of international cultural, institutional, corporate, and private clients, Mr. Skolnick writes, lectures, and teaches extensively. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Museum Studies Programme at the University of Leicester and is also co- author of the book, “What is Exhibition Design?”. Since the 1980s, he has earned numerous awards including Architectural Digest’s “AD100,” Cooper Union’s “Achievers Under 40” and “The Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement”, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Long Island Chapter of the AIA, and many local, state, and national AIA Honor Awards. Mr. Skolnick currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Longhouse Reserve, Architecture OMI, and A Blade of Grass.

Get to know the 2015 Hamptons Innovator,

Richard Meier

Richard Meier received his architectural training at Cornell University and established his own office in New York in 1963. His practice has included major civic commissions in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including courthouses and city halls, museums, corporate headquarters, and housing and private residences. Among his most well-known projects are The Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Jubilee Church in Rome, Italy; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; Perry and Charles Street Condominiums in New York, New York; the Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris, France; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain.

In 1984, Mr. Meier was awarded the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, considered the field’s highest honor. In the same year, he was selected architect for the prestigious commission to design The Getty Center in Los Angeles, which was opened to popular and critical acclaim in December 1997. Among the projects recently completed by Richard Meier & Partners are the Arp Museum in Germany; the OCT Shenzhen Clubhouse in China; the Broad Art Center at UCLA; the Italcementi i.lab in Italy; the United States Federal Courthouse in San Diego, California; and Weill Hall, the Life Sciences Technology Building at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Projects currently under construction include the Leblon Offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; a hotel complex in Jesolo, Italy; a residential tower in Tel Aviv, Israel; a resort in South Korea; two residential towers in Tokyo, Japan; Phase 1 of a Master Plan for downtown Newark, New Jersey; and residences in Bodrum, Turkey.

In 1997, Richard Meier received the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award from the American Institute of Architects, and, in the same year, the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese government in recognition of lifetime achievement in the arts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the American Institute of Architects, and he received a Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the AIA in 1980 and a Gold Medal from the Los Angeles Chapter in 1998. His numerous awards include thirty National AIA Honor Awards and over fifty regional AIA Design Awards. In 1989, Richard Meier received the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1992, the French Government honored him as a Commander of Arts and Letters, and in 1995 he was elected Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011 Richard Meier received the AIANY President’s Award and the Sidney Strauss Award from the New York Society of Architects. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters from which he received the Gold Medal for Architecture in 2008. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Naples, New Jersey Institute of Technology, The New School for Social Research, Pratt Institute, the University of Bucharest, and North Carolina State University.

Get to know the 2016 Hamptons Innovator,

Deborah Berke

Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP is an architect, educator, and founder of Deborah Berke Partners. Based in New York City, Deborah Berke Partners designs buildings and spaces around the world that are of lasting value and that enhance the lives of their users. The firm’s work encompasses residential, cultural, institutional, commercial, and hospitality projects. Current work includes residences on the East and West Coasts, a new construction townhouse in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and the Rockefeller Arts Center in Fredonia, New York.

Deborah Berke will become Dean of the Yale School of Architecture beginning in July 2016. She has been a Professor (adjunct) at the school since 1987. In 2012, she received the inaugural Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship & Prize from the University of California at Berkeley, which recognizes individuals who contribute to the advancement of women in architecture and whose work demonstrates a commitment to sustainability and to strengthening community. She is a trustee and vice president of the Urban Design Forum, a James Howell Foundation board member, and serves on the Yaddo Board of Directors. In 2008, Yale University Press published a book on her work, the first book by the press on a contemporary architect. Two new volumes on her firm’s work, from Rizzoli and Artifice books, will be published in 2016.

Get to know the 2017 Hamptons Innovator,

Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart is an Emmy Award-winning television show host, entrepreneur, bestselling author of 88 books, and America’s most trusted lifestyle expert and teacher. Millions of people rely on Martha Stewart as a source of useful “how-to” information for all aspects of everyday living—cooking, entertaining, gardening, home renovating, collecting, organizing, crafting, holidays, healthy living and pets. The Martha Stewart brand reaches approximately 100 million consumers across all media and merchandising platforms each month. Her branded products can be found in over 70 million households and have a growing retail presence in thousands of locations.

Get to know the 2019 Hamptons Innovator,

Edwina von Gal

Principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina von Gal creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. She has collaborated with architects such as Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf, Maya Lin, and Toshiko Mori, on projects for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Richard Serra, Larry Gagosian, and many others in the environmental, design and art communities. Her work has been published in most major publications. Her book “Fresh Cuts” won the Quill and Trowel award for garden writing.

In 2008, while designing the park for The Biomuseo Panama, Edwina founded the Azuero Earth Project, promoting native species reforestation on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, perhaps the first of its kind to work without synthetic chemicals. In 2013, Edwina went on to create the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit organization based in the USA dedicated to raising consciousness about the dangers of toxic lawn and garden chemicals to protect the health of people, their pets, and the planet. Perfect Earth Project educates homeowners and professionals in nature-based landscape management techniques that provide beautiful, safe results at no extra cost.

Edwina has served on boards and committees for a number of horticultural and arts organizations, and is currently on the board of What Is Missing?, Maya Lin’s multifaceted media artwork about the loss of biodiversity, and the advisory board of The Philip Johnson Glass House. She received the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art’s Arthur Ross Award in 2012, and is the 2017 recipient of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for the Visual Arts. In 2018 she received the NY School of Interior Design’s Green Design Award and The Isamu oguchi Award. She lectures regularly around the country and gave a TED talk in 2018.

Get to know the 2018 Hamptons Innovator,

Harry Bates

With a career spanning 58 years, Bates is one of the first and longest-practicing modernist architects to set up shop on Long Island’s East End. A 1952 graduate of North Carolina State University, Harry Bates was fortunate to have as teachers and guest lecturers Mumford, Fuller, Mies, Neutra, Gropius and Wright. After College, he worked for Edward Waugh Associates and left in 1955 to work as an architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he worked on several iconic buildings with Gordon Bunshaft such as the Reynolds Metals Building in Richmond, Virginia, the Pepsi Cola Building, the Chase Manhattan Bank Building in New York City and Bunshaft’s own East Hampton Residence.

His relationship with Long Island started in 1960, when he built a small home for himself in the Pines on Fire Island. His work caught the eyes of a generation of modern enthusiasts, consisting of young designers, artists and professionals including Mel Dwork, Jay Spectre and Barbara Gladstone. Besides the dramatic lines and creative use of minimal materials, the early Bates houses were striking in the way they evoked the openness of the 1960s, a period that has come to represent a cultural awakening in American society. The designs reflected this and exposed his clients a new and exciting way of living.

Bates relocated the office to eastern Long Island in 1980 after having built approximately 50 houses on the East End. Paul Masi and Harry Bates partnered their design philosophies in 2000 to form Bates Masi + Architects. Photographs and drawings of Harry’s early works were on display in a well-received show in 2010 titled, “Second House – Exhibition of Early Architecture of Harry Bates – 1960-1970.”