Lee Hnetinka

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is reportedly the buyer behind Washington, D.C.’s largest house, a two-building spread that used to house the city’s Textile Museum. The Washington Post, which Mr. Bezos owns,  attributed  the news to a source with knowledge of the sale. Combined, the two buildings add up to a massive, 27,000-square-foot property. The buildings sold Oct. 21 for $23 million to a buyer called The Cherry Revocable Trust, according to D.C. property records. The two historic brick buildings on S Street in the posh neighborhood of Kalorama would put Mr. Bezos a few minutes’ walk from Ivanka Trump and her husband, senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, who recently bought a new home on Tracy Place. Mr. Bezos is also a few blocks from a house the Obama family will occupy until their youngest daughter, Sasha, is finished with high school. She is currently a sophomore at Sidwell Friends. Mr. Bezos, 53, has said in the past that he had no plans to mo...

Handloom products brand Tantuja produced by the West Bengal State Handloom Weavers' Cooperative Society, which was earlier available only on Amazon India, will now also, be available in the US market through Amazon's Global Selling Program. This association will help the society to tap a wider customer base with a huge demand for traditional Indian products. West Bengal is known for the rich tradition of handloom weaving. Jamdani, Tangail, Baluchari and Daccai are some of the most popular heritage handloom saris from West Bengal. Amazon India has launched an impressive selection of products across categories with brands such as Biba, Fab India, Himalaya Amul, and 24 Mantra Organic to name a few. CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon Through its Global Selling Program, Amazon offers end-to-end product solutions by enhancing seller enrolment services like imaging, logistics, and helping them connect with the right advisors to get assistance on t...

“I love that people have to wait to get what they want because that means they’re going to get exactly what they want,” says Eliza Gatfield, founder, CEO, and design director of  Custom Cool  in Quogue. “We provide a lot of attention, and our customers really appreciate it.” That’s putting it mildly. Gatfield presides over a group of like-minded creatives who share her passion for bringing “beautiful, ethically made products” to the Hamptons (and beyond) that are truly unique, decidedly luxurious, and undeniably cool. After studying architecture and fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design and textiles at Central Saint Martins in London, Gatfield felt the spark to push the boundaries of designs for the home. Living in and traveling throughout Southeast Asia for several years, Gatfield was also able to gain practical knowledge of rug making. Finally, she could not only conceive her visionary designs but also have them expertly executed, as well. Custom Cool was...

Furnishing your Hamptons abode just got a little easier thanks to the inaugural  St. Frank  East Coast pop-up shop, which premiered over Memorial Day weekend.  The mission-driven artisanal textile and home décor company teamed up with interior design firm SWAYSTUDIO to transform their new Hamptons store into a chic, visually pleasing experience that was inspired by an eclectically decorated St. Frank Hamptons home. Location on Main Street in East Hampton, the space is divided into distinct living, dining, library, and bedroom spaces that highlight St. Frank's Tree of Life and Kuba Cloth wallpaper, as well as extraordinary vintage furniture, the brand's signature art and textiles, soft goods, and gifts. The Hamptons pop-up will also offer exclusive in-store-only products like collaborations with Rachelle Hruska of Lingua Franca and custom Gary Linden x St. Frank surfboards featuring the brand's signature prints.  As with St. Frank's online presence, the br...

WHEN YOU DESCEND FROM A FAMILY WHOSE NAME HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED WITH LUXURY VENETIAN SILKS, VELVETS, AND DAMASKS FOR FIVE GENERATIONS, where else would you live but in one of the exotic floating city’s most venerable palazzi? And so it is with Andrea Rubelli, who resides with his wife, Sandrina, and their son, Leonardo, in a building near the Grand Canal that was old before Columbus arrived in the Americas. “The style is early Gothic,” says Andrea, who runs the historic  Rubelli  firm alongside his father, Alessandro, and one of his two brothers, Nicolò Rubelli. “Our architect estimates that it was built in the 14th century, probably around 1370.” Even more remarkable is that many of the home’s architectural elements—from the façade, with its galleries of arched windows, to the ceiling beams and terrazzo floors—are original. The Rubellis’ palazzo has been in the family since great-great-grandfather Lorenzo inherited it from his second wife. The Rubelli home, like ...

Los Angeles contemporary line Chaser has made its way to the East Coast with a second store. The brand — known for its extra soft, vintage-inspired rock T-shirts across men, women and kids — now sits on both coasts with the opening of its store on Main Street in East Hampton, N.Y. “The Hamptons is one of the most gorgeous places in the whole of America. We felt it represented what the brand is about,” said owner and founder Hadi Salem. “East Hampton, for us, it felt like it was the right demographic for the brand and we thought we could do business there. In a world where not many people are opening stores, we thought, ‘OK, let’s take a chance.’” Chaser, seen as embodying an effortless chic that has come to define many of the brands coming out of the  Los Angeles  area, is sold in about 800 U.S. boutiques and department stores, including  Ron Robinson ,  Fred Segal ,  American Rag ,  Revolve ,  Nordstrom  and  Bloomingdale’s ...

ROLE models for women in business are still too rare, not least in Britain. Last November an independent review backed by the government urged FTSE 100 companies to raise the share of women on their boards from 27% to 33% by 2020. Sadly, that push this week lost one of its leading champions, Helen Alexander, the deputy chair of the review. Business had no better ambassador. She was self-effacing but a world-class networker—a winning combination that helps explain, along with her intelligence and charm, why all sorts of firms wanted her on their board (from Northern Foods to Centrica, Rolls-Royce and the British arm of Huawei), to advise them (Bain Capital) or to chair them (the Port of London Authority and, more recently, UBM, an events business). In 2009 she became the first woman to be president of the Confederation of British Industry, the country’s main employers’ group. But Helen had built her reputation in the media industry. From 1997 to 2008 she was chief executive o...

IT IS a short walk from a tiny shop with peeling yellow paint in downtown La Coruña, in northern Spain, to a dazzling five-storey store, opened in September by Zara, by far the world’s most successful purveyor of “fast fashion”. In this stroll across three city blocks, the career of Amancio Ortega unfolds: from teenaged apprentice in the corner shop, Gala, a men’s clothing business, to Europe’s richest entrepreneur, the majority owner of one of its best-performing firms.  CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon According to one employee of Zara who works with him, “the true story of Amancio Ortega has not been told.” Mr Ortega, the son of an itinerant railway worker, who started at the corner shop aged 13, had a basic upbringing: an ex-colleague says he talks of meals of “only potatoes”. He has lived mainly in Galicia, a relatively poor region with no history in textiles. Yet there, in 1975, he founded Zara—a manufacturer-cum-retailer that, along with ...

My family has though me to follow my dreams. One day I’ll be one of the most important designers of the world. My goal is to take all the knowledge I got and the talent that I have and turn them into an inspirational collection reflecting the essence of my people. Highly trained to sew polyamide/elastane microfiber, silk and cotton fabric, I will never work with polyester. I’m a fiber specialist because I value my art and the skin needs.