Barry and Sheryl Schwartz's Great Escape in Santa Barbara
The running joke throughout the project was that they were building a “cozy little beach shack.” Barry Schwartz, the cofounder of the Calvin Klein fashion empire, and Sheryl, his wife of more than 50 years, had rented a surfside getaway in Santa Barbara, California, for roughly a decade when they acquired the plot of land next door to craft their own slice of paradise. “This beach is an absolute jewel, something truly special,” Sheryl says of the spectacular oceanfront location. “You can’t help but fall under its spell.”
In short order, the couple assembled a design team up to the task of conjuring an idyllic home worthy of the site and its myriad allurements. That roster included architect Howard Backen of Backen & Gillam, interior designers Kathleen and Tommy Clements of Clements Design, and landscape architect Mark Rios of RCH Studios. “It should be glamorous yet inviting, with lots of places to read and enjoy a quiet moment,” Sheryl recalls of her mandate to the team.
“She wanted the procession through the property to be very dramatic. When you reach a certain point, the ocean simply takes over,” Backen says, describing the jaw-dropping 40-foot-wide, column-free expanse that connects the living/dining room with the sublime natural vista just beyond. The architect’s axial arrangement leads visitors past a monumental entry gate designed by Ingrid Donat, through a richly landscaped courtyard, into the house’s voluminous social space, and from there out to the intoxicating embrace of the terrace and ocean view.
The open courtyard is flanked by the Schwartzes’ home offices, a guest suite with its own private pocket garden, a gym, and an intimate secondary dining room highlighted by a gemlike mirrored bar cabinet by Vincenzo De Cotiis. At the center of the courtyard, a pair of sofas by the great Hollywood tastemaker William Haines pull up to a firepit of rough-hewn stone. “The Haines pieces felt sort of perfect. There’s something about Sheryl—the way she lives, dresses, and entertains—that feels like a throwback to a bygone era of glamour,” says Tommy Clements. His mother, Kathleen, is quick to point out that Barry isn’t exactly chopped liver. “He’s always in head-to-toe cashmere—a very elegant, dapper man,” she adds.
Inside the Serene Beachfront Home in Santa Barbara
On the upper floor of the home, a matched pair of master bedrooms feature sliding glass walls that disappear, opening the breezy, sun-kissed spaces to a seemingly endless Pacific panorama from on high. A pergola, running perpendicular to the central axis, connects the two masters. “You get these marvelous diagonal views from the bedrooms, which was the whole point of the exercise,” Backen explains. “The house has a limited materials palette—mostly reclaimed teak on the exterior, a titanium roof, and a little board-form concrete—so that the architecture recedes as much as possible. The structure is meant to capture and focus the drama of the site.”
Rios seconds the notion. “Although the landscape is entirely new, it’s meant to read as if it might always have been there. We brought in large olive and ficus trees and chose the colors of the plantings to blend in with the Santa Barbara landscape,” he says. “The guiding principle for all of us was to erase the boundaries between indoors and out, to establish a sense of place and a personality for the home that feels at one with nature.” The hushed sumptuousness of the architecture and landscape is echoed in the assemblage of fine vintage furnishings by 20th-century masters on the order of Diego Giacometti, Oscar Niemeyer, Josef Hoffmann, and Jean Prouvé, all mixed with companionable pieces by contemporary luminaries Joseph Dirand, Frederik Molenschot, Michael Anastassiades, and Jim Zivic. Strategically placed artworks—like the terra-cotta Etruscan statue fragment from the eighth century B.C. that presides over the living room—add grace notes to the eminently restrained composition. “Sheryl wanted it to feel unpretentious and completely appropriate for the beach, yet drop-dead chic. That tension, between the elevated and the understated, animates the house,” Tommy says.
Get the Look of Barry and Sheryl Schwartz's Great Escape
Of the many dazzling decorative features, Sheryl is perhaps most enamored of the formidable entry gate—the first com-mission of its kind for Donat. Installers from Paris assembled the piece on site, attaching bronze panels inscribed with a subtle geometric motif on a sturdy substructure. “It was a 50th-anniversary present from Barry to me and me to Barry. The door handle is discreetly inscribed with the words ‘50 years,’ which is not meant for anyone else to notice,” Sheryl says. “Whatever we’ve got going for us, it works.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
