"I feel like the Jennifer Tilly of Bellport,” says Chris Benz, jokingly comparing himself to the actor, Bravo star, and Los Angeles real estate collector. Like her, he now has two homes a short drive apart—one for living, the other for hosting on the South Shore of Long Island. His most recent acquisition is a farmhouse-style residence in nearby Brookhaven. “At first I didn’t know what I’d do with it,” Benz says. “But I said, ‘That’s where we will have dinner parties or cocktail parties.’ And that is what happens now.”

Benz, a fashion designer and the former creative director of Bill Blass, has long had a parallel interest in interior design. In 2020 he moved from Brooklyn to Bellport, having renovated another house with his partner, lawyer Peter Toumbekis. He later launched Cult Projects, a concierge service for home renovations. Last year he assumed an additional role as senior vice-president of design for Brooklinen.

He wasn’t necessarily looking for a second home when he noticed a circa 1900 house languishing on the market. Upon touring it, Benz found a rabbit warren of rooms, including some with no windows and a sunken living room that was, as he puts it, “done up to look like Camelot.” Still, the original patina was intact—and there was a swimming pool out back.

“I decided this was the universe giving me a little gift to do whatever I wanted,” recalls Benz, who compares the house’s labyrinthine layout to a quirky boutique hotel with spots for lounging, reading, or sitting by the fire. “I ended up with a lot of liminal spaces—rooms where you can plop down and just be social.”

He turned one into a bar/library clad in the same hollyhock chintz motif that decorator Albert Hadley used in the 1960s for style icon Nancy Pyne. (The pattern is now named after her.) Overlooking the pool, the sunny great room, with its leather sofas and large Noguchi orb, is a summer hangout. In winter, friends gather in the sunken living room around a mantel n salvaged glazed brown tile. “I wanted to create little hits of continuity with the original spirit of the house,” he says.

Outside, Benz worked with Nelson Briggs of BPM Landscapes to soften the grounds. An asphalt drive was replaced with pea gravel and crushed oyster shells and framed with magnolias. In the rear garden, a deck was removed and swapped for stone steps. Inspired by a trip to Japan, Benz turned a pool shed into a teahouse of sorts, with lanterns and a roof covered in the same ceramic tiles as traditional temple architecture.

If one space defines the project most of all, it is the kitchen, where a custom stainless-steel island can seat up to 10 people. It even made an impression on Cooper Wehde, an executive producer of The Bear, who spent a week in the house last summer after being introduced to Benz through a mutual friend—the actor Jeremy Allen White. “That kitchen is truly exceptional,” says Wehde. “We found ourselves gravitating there constantly. I miss it right now as I’m thinking about it.”

While Benz says his real estate ambitions are now sated, he relishes having a second house just for entertaining. “Friends usually opt to stay at that house, as opposed to our house,” he says. “Which is always a good sign.”

This story appears in the July/August issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.