Hadley Wiggins-Marin doesn’t just love the past; she knows exactly how to fuse it with the present. The thoughtful interior designer has a unique skill for finding the thread between vintage eras and objects, making them span the ages and work together seamlessly in any home. She stays away from singular trends, be they Midcentury Modern, Modern Farmhouse or even Japandi, the new Japanese-Scandinavian minimalist trend du jour, preferring one all her own. Call it Timeless Eclectic.
“I try to avoid trends as they can feel one note and contrived,” says the designer, who divides her time between New York and the North Fork. “My true passion is antiques, things that are unique and completely one of a kind, and that’s kind of in conflict with this idea of a trend.” Expanding on her passion, she recently repurposed her Peconic antiques store North Found & Co. into a showroom/office space for her full-time interior and architectural design company Hadley Wiggins Design Studio.
If she doesn’t like things one note, it’s because she’s not one note, either. Born in Muir Beach, Calif., Wiggins-Marin lived in London and then New York, with a family home on Martha’s Vineyard, “a continued source of inspiration.” Her husband hails from Italy, and they travel there a few times a year to vacation and visit family. Not surprisingly, with its rich history and beautiful aesthetic, Italy serves both as treasure trove and muse.
“Even the mundane is a source of inspiration in Italy, especially in the Tyrolean/Alto Adige regions we frequent,” says Wiggins-Marin. “Milanese apartments taught me how subtle the harmony can be amongst eclectic goods — mixing the ancient with the hyper modern.” In fact, she joked that Italy’s gorgeous 1930s Villa Necchi Campiglio, the setting for films like “I Am Love” and “House of Gucci,” was a major distraction to following the plotlines.
UNDERSTANDING ANTIQUES
There’s an inherent language in antiques and vintage items, and Wiggins-Marin’s design career plus art history background at Sarah Lawrence College contributed to her fluency. It’s also probably why every interiors photo on her Instagram @hadleywiggins looks like a museum-worthy painting.
When it comes to acquiring antiques, the average person often needs help sifting through the many disparate items in a store, and that’s where an expert’s eye comes in. She praises Southold’s White Flower Farmhouse for its beautiful curation of farmhouse white and blonde wood, which pulls together a strong aesthetic. “Some antique stores do the work for you because otherwise it can be hard to see the forest for the trees,” she says. “With a certain level of staging, they help customers find the harmony.” Sites like Pinterest or Instagram are also helpful to hone in on an aesthetic, but she cautions getting trapped in a visual echo chamber where the algorithm only shows you what you already like. To be open to discovering that truly special piece, she advises perusing vintage stores like Greenport’s Beall & Bell (now only selling via Instagram), or digital sites like Chairish or 1stDibs.
“The scheme was built around and in harmony with this one tiny one-of-a-kind object. That’s always such a pleasure.”
Hadley Wiggins-Marin
Even defined eras and styles have a range within them, which allows for more mixing than one might imagine. “You can choose something that has a midcentury shape, but maybe it has a patina that is defined as more rustic,” she says. “And then that starts to be accepted by a rustic structure.” Similarly, a sleek minimalist home with stark walls can almost function as a gallery space for an eclectic vintage piece, which essentially becomes a piece of sculpture and focal point.
When it comes to color, Wiggins-Marin loves a moody space, and it is specifically why many clients seek her out. But she makes sure darker hues or patterns are applied with artistry and restraint. “You can’t have a whole house be incredibly moody, it’s just not practical,” she says, adding that the flow of the house must allow for it. “You have to find those spaces where you can do it, and color allows you to create these really diverse environments within your house. You can pick one smaller space where you really want to feel compressed and tucked in. Now you have reason to use all your different spaces, and they become a destination instead of just more of the same.”
Wallpaper, which is having a moment now, not only adds color and personality but can also help mix eras. “Wallpaper is one of the best ways to create an eclectic space,” she says. “You can pick a paper that you might put in the granny category, but add a midcentury credenza in front of it and you have a really satisfying juxtaposition.”
Sometimes a vintage piece wields outsized power, such as the pale tones of a vintage lamp shade that inspired the colors for an entire room. “The scheme was built around and in harmony with this one tiny one-of-a-kind object,” she says. “That’s always such a pleasure.”
LOVE AT FIRST GLANCE
One of Wiggins-Marin’s innate skills is the immediate ability to spot the hidden vintage gem. Where an overflowing store or jam-packed estate sale often overwhelms the average person, her eye will laser focus on exactly what she needs for a current or future project. “I’ve been to so many antique fairs and done so much antique shopping in my life, I can scan a pile of stuff and know instantly if there’s something I want or not. I won’t even stop walking!” she says, much to the amazement of whoever she’s with. “They’ll always say, ‘How did you spot that?’ and truthfully, I don’t know!”
That same gut instinct landed her on the North Fork in the first place over a decade ago. While casually house-hunting in the Hamptons with her then-boyfriend (now husband), their realtor steered them to the other fork. After touring five homes in one day, they bought a 1920s New Suffolk farmhouse. They have since moved to an 1880s farmhouse in Cutchogue and rent out the former.
With two homes now and a growing business, she has more space to preserve history and authenticity in her antique finds, whether for herself or her clients. “It’s all about buying what you absolutely love and finding the balance of how it all works together.”
She is also strongly against buying items with the intent to transform them. “I have restored plenty of things, but I don’t buy an antique with the vision to completely strip it and give it a new identity. The reason I’m buying something is because it’s a piece of art and the artist. You can never recreate the way the paint crackled a certain way. You’d have to wait 50 years for it to happen!”
She recalls the time in her former antiques store when some people were talking amongst themselves saying, ‘Oh, this is the right size; we’ll just paint it white.’ “And I jumped in and said, ‘I don’t think this is the piece for you.’ I just couldn’t help myself!”
