Picking Greenport for her beautiful new decor shop was a no-brainer for Barbara Fisher.
“It reminds me of old Sag Harbor,” says the interior designer, who had a home in the South Fork village for 15 years. “We’d been coming out here for years visiting the vineyard scene, and Greenport just kept growing and gnawing at me.”
Her eponymous new shop Barbara Fisher Home (449 Main St.), which sits in a Victorian house on the northern side of the village near the Zey Hotel and across the street from Clarke’s Garden and Home, feels right at home in Greenport. The store offers a curated selection of decor from all over the world, but the warm, inviting space filled with natural light feels very personal and intimate, filled with treasures Fisher has discovered during her many travels.
Her path to design was purposeful, although it didn’t start there initially. Fisher had a successful career in television programming in Manhattan before deciding it was time to follow her passion for interior design. When she was 30, she enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology (S.U.N.Y.) in Manhattan and interned with design luminaries Jeffrey Bilhuber and Betty Wasserman.
“I got bit by the [design] bug,” she says. “I raised my son while I was doing part-time design work and it all grew from there.”
To complement her design work, Fisher opened Barbara Fisher Home here as a luxury but accessible showroom, with a melange of styles that meld together well under her careful eye, from mid-century modern to contemporary.
“I can’t begin to tell you how positive it’s been,” she says. “It’s great. People walk in and their jaws drop. They ‘get’ it. The response has been, ‘I love it. I want to buy gifts. What kind of design work do you do?’”
Some of the items in the store include Marc Phillips handwoven rugs, unique, hand-crafted jewelry from Jonas Studios and many other pieces large and small, from furniture to glassware.
“I want a price point that’s appealing and approachable,” Fisher explains. “Yes, you can buy an $8,000 rug, but you can also buy a $42 accessory. I want people to come in and feel like this is a home. I’m in this gorgeous Victorian home and I want people to feel comfortable.”
Although the summer is over, Fisher aims to stay open most of the year, with a break in January and February when she plans to visit Paris and Portugal to meet with artisans and source items for the shop and her design work.
Fisher also wants to fill her walls with a local artist’s work, and is open to submissions.
All of these parts — Fisher’s knack for aesthetic, her desire to have art on the walls, making sure the store is both special and accessible — are all facets of what drives her: “I just want to be surrounded by beautiful things.”
Barbara Fisher Home is open Thursday through Monday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Visit @barbarathedecorator for more information on the latest items in the store, as well as upcoming trunk sales.
