We are walking over a miniature bridge that crosses a babbling brook in rural western Connecticut, and a little house straight out of a fairy tale—its architectural style is actually called storybook—beckons in the near distance. Its wood siding is painted a deep shade of chocolate brown, with its windows and single door a contrasting forest green. The house—six rooms and a porch—dates from 1937, Stuart Vevers tells me.
“Wow!” I exclaim. “Isn’t that the year the movie Snow White was released?” This conversation is not as odd as you might think: Vevers, a transplanted Brit who has been the creative director of Coach for more than a decade, is an avid Disney fan, and I am, I’ll admit modestly, quite the Disney scholar myself, with a home liberally littered with Mickeys and Donalds. Vevers and I have discussed all this before, so I already know that he is a connoisseur of Disney experiences all over the world, including the home base in Orlando, which he has visited more than 10 times—and I am soon to learn that one of his early dates with his husband, the accessories design director Ben Seidler, took place at Disneyland Paris.
Now he and Seidler escape to this cottage-like getaway with their twins, River and Vivienne, who have just turned four and are already veterans of the Magic Kingdom’s Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, where Vivienne underwent an extreme makeover and emerged a glittery princess. The two are currently viewing this visitor a bit warily—is it my squeals over the vintage wallpaper that has put them off? Any semblance of editorial objectivity seems to vanish once I step inside their 1,100-square-foot home, its walls covered in the kind of 1930s deadstock paper last seen decorating a parlor in an Astaire-Rogers movie. If ever there was a perfect match of occupant and residence, it is Vevers and this hideaway, which the designer found two years ago by scrolling the internet.
Three blurry pics showed up on one of his real estate searches, with the accompanying text reading something like “Hidden Gem, Tucked away.” And yes, it was hidden, and yes, it was tucked away—but it was hardly in the greatest shape. “The same family owned it from 1937 until 10 years ago.
Unfortunately it hadn’t been lived in for about a decade, the utilities didn’t work, and there was a dead mouse in the hallway. I am quite freaked out by rodents,” Vevers tells me. But Stuart, I say, aren’t there lots of animals up here? We’re in the country! “Only chipmunks and bunnies—so far, only cute things!” he insists—though, after gentle prodding, he admits a bear and its cub—cute?—have been spotted in the driveway.
In any case, as soon as he crossed that little bridge and saw the place, he was a goner. “Most people weren’t going to want it—it’s so small, and it needed work—but I was charmed. We kept the footprint of the rooms as much as we could—it was more of a restoration—and we didn’t work with an architect, but with a local builder: I find it more appealing to be hands-on.
” The windows, while refreshed, have the same wood frames they featured 80-odd years ago; the faux ceilings have been banished; and now the slanted eaves sport, in two cases, slightly spooky vintage antler chandeliers. When your total square footage is just a squeak over 1,000 (full disclosure: it sits on 40 rolling acres), the house tour doesn’t take long. That said, the magic is in the details—as with the Jenny Lind spindle beds in the room that River and Vivienne share, which came with the house.
“I wanted our home to be fun and entertaining and happy for them,” Vevers declares. I ask him if the twins get along, and he says that while they can be frenemies, he sometimes finds them huddled in one bed, telling each other stories. Most of the rest of the house’s furnishings were found at antiques shops or flea markets—the Elephant’s Trunk flea, at which the couple are regulars, is just a short drive away.
The floral pictures in the primary bedroom were discovered on Shelter Island; the hooked rug in the hall bearing the date 1937 was unearthed in Massachusetts. A pair of 19th-century pink Bristol glass lamps in the living room are just itching to be smashed by a four-year-old’s hand, but Vevers isn’t worried—it is important to him that the twins grow up surrounded by beauty. “Children notice places that are well cared for,” says Seidler, who adds that any inevitable small tragedies will simply become stories in the life of the house.
In winter, when the creek freezes over—the bridge can get a bit slippery, Vevers admits—there is a wood-burning stove in the kitchen for cozy comfort (though as this isn’t actually 1937, the house does feature central heating as well), along with restored cabinets with scalloped valances. “I like old things,” Vevers explains, “but there is also an environmental concern—why not use things that already exist? The kitchen floors are all reclaimed wood—they basically looked the same as they do now, but they were so rotten, the stove in the kitchen was sunken!” When I point out that the 1930s-inspired bathroom, though adorable, might be fine for two adults and a couple of preschoolers but could prove challenging when those cherubs turn into hulking teenagers, Vevers beckons me to look outside, where an annex cottage—in the same brown and green hues as the house—has just about been finished by builders. It will provide a place for friends and relatives to stay—and also, inevitably, a refuge for a sulky adolescent to play music as loud as possible.
“River, don’t keep taking toys out—you only played with that one for like 30 seconds!” Seidler playfully admonishes his son, who has returned perhaps several dozen times to the hand-painted wedding trunk in the dining room. The table is set with Ginori’s Italian fruit pattern, which the couple have been collecting for years, amassing hundreds of pieces, while the glasses and cutlery are from a nearby shop called Plain Goods. “We use it all—nothing is for show,” Vevers says.
Everything here is so considered, so lovely, that I ask Vevers about the homes in which he grew up in the North of England. Were they stunning spaces as well? He laughs. “We lived in semidetached houses, with pretty suburban decoration—once we lived over a pub! I had an ’80s teenage bedroom: I had a poster of a band called Five Star that I loved—they were gorgeous; I still listen to them.
And I had a poster of River Phoenix from My Own Private Idaho .” Vevers attended the University of Westminster, where he lived with three roommates in a student flat in Harrow that cost 30 pounds a week and got so cold he remembers wearing gloves in bed. “I could see my breath,” he says.
That was a long time ago. Now, in addition to this haven, the family’s main residence is a town house on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—not far from the 77th Street weekend flea market. “We’ve found some good things there!” Seidler swears.
There is also a circa 1908 Arts and Crafts house in England’s Lake District, where the two celebrated their wedding in 2014. At the moment, though, it’s this Toontown-size retreat that has Vevers’s heart. Just before I leave, he offers to light up the bridge, and I half expected the lanterns to illuminate Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and his nephews trooping over the span.
Instead, there are River and Vivienne—barefoot and hopping up and down, begging their parents to let them splash in the water. In this story: grooming, Kumi Craig; set design, Rebecca O’Donnell..
