March 6, 2017
New York–based designer Victoria Hagan loves to shop the antiques galleries of Palm Beach, where she has a home. Above, she steps out of F.S. Henemader, accompanied by this story’s author, having enjoyed a successful bout of browsing its global mix of offerings. Top: Hagan takes a brief pause during a day filled with fantastic finds.
Interior designer Victoria Hagan was dubbed “the reigning queen of restrained elegance” by Veranda magazine. Obviously, whoever wrote that never went shopping with her for antiques, as I recently did in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hagan is indeed elegant, but on this particular mission she was hardly restrained. In fact, the experience was akin to taking a five-year-old to Disney World.
If one criterion for being a successful decorator is an unbridled passion for one’s work, however, then Hagan has it in spades. For the better part of a morning, I witnessed a lot of ooh-ing and aaah-ing from this usually subdued woman, whom I’ve known for more than 20 years. (“Twenty-two, to be exact,” she corrected me.) “I love what I do,” she exclaimed several times, iPhone in hand, snapping photos of whatever objects caught her fancy. And there were plenty of them at each of the three places we visited.
Hagan and her husband, media investor Michael Berman, have been coming to Palm Beach ever since their twin sons, now nearly adults, were young. Until recently, their hotel of choice on this storied barrier island between the Atlantic and Intracoastal Waterway, here known as Lake Worth, was the Four Seasons on South Ocean Boulevard. But as the designer’s portfolio increasingly encompassed clients on Florida’s Gold Coast, resulting in many more site trips, the idea of having a place of their own became not only appealing but practical. Two years ago, the couple built a house on the Intracoastal, not too far from their familiar Four Seasons. Not that they needed another place to call home. The Hagan-Bermans already had four: a New York apartment and houses in Connecticut, the Hamptons and on Nantucket. Then again, what’s one more, especially when you’re so skilled at filling them with beautiful things?
Hagan has an enviable career and a stellar list of clients, including Conan O’Brien and Joe and Jill Biden (yes, Hagan affirmed, the Bidens are every bit as lovely as they seem). She also works with high-profile types who want to lie low when it comes to their private lives. Thus, much of her most stunning work will never be published.
“So much of my work is a mix, and the possibilities are endless. I enjoy the search for the right pieces and the accompanying complications.”
The aesthetic appeal of Palm Beach extends well beyond its antiques shops, of course, to include such architectural and urbanistic pleasures as the recently redone Town Hall Square and its Memorial Fountain, near Worth Avenue.
Although she’s had her own firm for 25 years, she doesn’t show the slightest sign of ennui. “My clients are such a source of inspiration for me,” she says. “They come to me with a long list of their likes and dislikes.” They also come to her with the assurance that a Victoria Hagan–designed residence will be classically and crisply tailored, easy to inhabit and beautiful to look at. Best of all, its style will have staying power.
That doesn’t mean boring or predictable. Hagan is always on the lookout for furniture or accessories that add a sense of surprise to a project, and she invariably finds them in the Palm Beach area. “I’ve been antiquing all my life,” she says. “When you’re immersed in something you love, as I am, it becomes second nature. My first purchase as a child was a pair of vintage broth cups. I call what I do when I’m antiquing my sport, my game.” And she goes about it as a hunter would, as if looking to bag a trophy. “So much of my work is a mix, and the possibilities are endless. I enjoy the search for the right pieces and the accompanying complications.”
Is there any period or style that doesn’t appeal to her? After a pause and then a laugh, she admits, “Ironically, it’s my namesake. I don’t care much for the Victorian era — too dark, too heavy.”
As for what’s trending, she points to the furniture of the 1960s and ’70s. “I appreciate the quirkiness, which can be rather industrial but also glamorous as it moves into the seventies,” she tells me. And as for color, “I see green making a comeback.” Environmentalists take note.
“It’s always fun to find the unexpected. If I’m doing a place in Montana” — where the antiques and vintage pickings are slim — “I don’t necessarily come upon what I’m looking for locally,” she says. In fact, she may very well find it on the narrow island of Palm Beach or on Antique Row, that stretch of 40-plus shops — some funky, some refined, some wildly eclectic, many members of 1stdibs — on South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach that has become the go-to shopping spot for designers, collectors and the eternally curious. The majority of the galleries there are within walking distance of one another. Many are tiny boutiques, a few are cavernous semi-warehouses. Their contents are inexhaustible, and visiting every one of them can easily take several days. We only had a few hours, however, so on this particular jaunt, Hagan and I visited two large and venerable vendors in West Palm and a third in Palm Beach proper (and I do mean proper).
Palm Beach Antique & Design Center
6910 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach; 561-588-5868
Clockwise from top left, at Palm Beach Antique & Design Center: Hagan leans over a Mies van der Rohe for Knoll Barcelona chair to snap a photo of a group of Mexican silver and inlaid boxes, mostly by Los Castillo, on top of a Saporiti coffee table.. The carved-wood horse lamps date from the 1960s. These mid-century modern chairs both swivel and pivot. A mid-century leopard-print chair, one of a pair, immediately caught Hagan’s attention.
The second we walked into this 10,000-square-foot space, we were greeted by Simonette Hakim, the genial owner of this emporium of mid-century miscellany. Then Hagan went right into stalking mode. She headed first for the leopards — a pair of leopard-print-covered Italian chairs from the 1960s, that is. Click went her iPhone. A sign nearby said, “Please do not sit on the chairs,” so Hagan asked Hakim for permission. Granted. Before she could get too comfortable, however, she spotted two large amber-colored vases, confessing, “I’m a real vase girl.”
Then a set of orange and clear Murano glass lamps caught her attentions. “Soooo cool,” she swooned. “But maybe with different shades. I’m going to send this to my staff.” Click again.
We moved steadily from room to room, taking in the offerings of 23 different dealers. The sticker prices seemed reasonable, considering the current hunger for mid-century modern furniture and artifacts. Throughout, Hagan was careful not to handle the objects, keenly aware that they do not belong to her or her clients — yet.
Hakim works in partnership with John Salibello, the revered New York antiquarian, and once had a store of her own in Greenwich Village called Room Service. What customers in Palm Beach and elsewhere want from her now is “anything shiny,” she says. “The ladies love mirrors, which I sell ten times more of than paintings.” Might it be so they can see their reflection — who is the fairest and all that? “The men like the look because it reminds them of their bachelor pads. Then there’s the interest in nineteen-sixties Murano glass and lacquered furniture. Very Hollywood glam.”
Amid the vast collection of sofas, consoles, dining tables and occasional chairs, there were also vitrines of jewelry, both fine and costume. Everything was reasonably — no, make that enticingly — priced. We left before too much damage was done.
3415 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach; 561-835-1319
Clockwise, from top left, at Cedric DuPont Antiques: Hagan and the eponymous gallerist climb the space’s staircase. French 19th-century Louis Philippe candelabras sit on an Italian Pietra Dura center table. An 18th-century Venetian lantern hangs on the main floor. Near one of the gallery’s two entrances is an Italian 19th-century Carrara marble sculpture signed S. Schroeder 1875.
Entering this emporium felt as if we were time traveling back through 200 years of history. But although he reigns over 20,000 square feet of exquisite 18th- and 19th-century European treasures, Cedric DuPont himself is very much of the 21st century — much younger than one would expect from looking at his offerings and utterly without pretense.
We felt right at home among the ormolu urns, oversized gold-leaf-framed mirrors, chaise longues and what seemed to a hanging garden of chandeliers. To quote Truman Capote on visiting Venice, it was “like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”
DuPont gave us a tour of what might as well be his private château. “I display things as I would in my own home,” he told us. (That would be some home.)
DuPont was born in France to French parents, both of whom were antiquarians. In 1981, however, his parents moved the family to the States, eventually settling in Palm Beach because of its European flavor and sophistication. DuPont essentially grew up there.
He acquired his raffiné taste at an astonishingly young age. “I used to go on buying trips with my mother and father, so I became immersed in their world,” he explained. “Now I search for antiques in private homes and estates rather than at auction houses, because it is going directly to the source. I know my clients well, so I am always thinking of how they want to live.” Which is, emphatically, not surrounded by the bamboo and wicker furniture, shell and coral lamps and splashy prints that have long been emblematic of Palm Beach style. “About eighty-five percent of what I sell is shipped out of state.”
The quality here is high, and so are the prices, which are fit for a king — or a kingpin. For those who like antique mirrors with hand-gilded frames, DuPont has more than 200. Then there are his three warehouses, which he invited Hagan to on her next trip. Her eyes lit up. “I’d love that,” she swooned.
316 South County Road, Palm Beach; 561-835-9237
Clockwise from top left, at F.S. Hanemader: Hagan admires blue-and-white Chinese export–style porcelain. A beaded tiger head hails from South Africa. Tessellated bone lamps flank ca. 1970 Asian turquoise kittens. A taxidermy swordfish arcs over a pair of 19th-century Anglo-Indian sideboards.
We left South Dixie, crossed over what’s known as the Middle Bridge back to Palm Beach and walked to F.S. Henemader, a local stalwart that has been in business for more than 20 years. Here, we found objects from Asia (chinoiserie), India (Anglo-Indian and Campaign furniture) and North Africa (Moorish tables), all of them tastefully displayed and not wedded to any particular era. It’s easy to imagine Henemader being a favorite among both the old guard and the nouveau riche residents on and off Ocean Boulevard.
Holly Henemader, the gallery’s petite blonde owner — together with her husband, Rick, both of them from Canada — described the collection as comprising “things a sea captain might purchase on his trip to the tropics — a combination of Florida and the Caribbean sometimes referred to as Floribbean.”
Not all of what Henemader offers is antique, however. There is, for example, the roomful of oversize blue-and-white porcelain ginger jars made today in China. And for die-hard Palm Beachers, there is — what else? — a significant contemporary coral collection.
I lost count of the number of times Hagan took out her iPhone to snap a photo, but it was clear that she was excited by what she saw and entirely at ease searching for treasures in this wildly diverse trio of shops, not just for herself but even more on behalf of those who hire her. “The single most important ingredient in my business is trust. Otherwise, it’s like food without salt.” And with that, off we went to lunch at Sant Ambroeus. After all, a girl’s gotta eat.
“So much of my work is a mix, and the possibilities are endless,” says Hagan, posed here with Pamela Fiori, the piece’s author, outside of the restaurant Sant Ambroeus, where they recharged after a busy day of browsing. “I enjoy the search for the right pieces.”
See Victoria Hagan’s Picks from Some of the 30-Plus Palm Beach Dealers on 1stdibs
