See Author and Photographer Kelly Klein’s House in Palm Beach

This article originally appeared in the August 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.

You’ve heard all that tallyho business about getting back up on the horse after a fall? Sometimes the brave one is the person who doesn’t get back on. For a dedicated horsewoman like Kelly Klein, who had been a competitive equestrian since age four, giving up riding two years ago was one of the most difficult decisions she’s ever had to make.

Over lunch at her new home in Palm Beach, Florida, the noted photographer and author (her sixth book, Pools: Reflections, a sequel to the 1992 bestseller* Pools,* will be published by Rizzoli next month) talks about her recent life changes—including her move into the house, one of the upsides of her choice to dismount once and for all. For more than two decades, Klein had spent winters in Wellington, the heart of Florida’s horse country. But after a bad fall, she accepted that though she’d had a great run, “it was time to be safe. After all, I am a mother now.” (Her son, Lukas, is four and a half.)

And so Klein put her Wellington condo on the market and started looking for a place nearby that would allow her to visit her horses and see friends, in particular her polo-playing beau, Nick Manifold. When she heard about a secluded lot in Palm Beach, with 130 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway, she moved to buy it.

“I knew in my mind how I wanted to live here—in an indoor-outdoor house, enjoying the breeze off the water, with the family always together,” Klein says. “I find that in big houses everybody is always in a different room, no one can find each other. I was going to build a really compact house. I call the four bedrooms my hotel rooms.”

The new house soon became her passion, her midlife canvas. “I’d never built one before,” she says. “Little piece by little piece, you put your house in order.” There was no question about who would design it: David Piscuskas, one of the eminences, with coprincipal Juergen Riehm, at the firm 1100 Architect. Piscuskas had already helped Klein with renovations of her Central Park West apartment.

The client told her architect she wanted something “a little Neutra, a little Ando, a little Bauhaus-y. I’ve become more of a minimalist, and I’ve learned that from Calvin,” she says, referring to her marriage to fashion icon Calvin Klein as well as her years working in his design studio. The two divorced in 2006 but remain friends. Did he offer her any direction for the house? “A few times, if I couldn’t make a decision, I’d e-mail him a photo asking his advice,” she says.

That didn’t happen too often. “Kelly is very decisive, design-savvy, and curious,” Piscuskas says. “She knew what she wanted.” As a result, the 3,000-square-foot stucco dwelling was built and decorated in 11 months, with only a one-percent cost overage. Klein returns the compliment: “Thanks to David’s crossing every t and dotting every i before we went to the architectural review board, they basically said this small house was a breath of fresh air for Palm Beach.”

The home’s “main event,” Piscuskas explains, occurs when the series of sliding oiled-teak doors are opened, uniting the 40-foot living area with a shaded water-view terrace featuring an outdoor fireplace. In contrast, the street-facing side of the house is windowless, an idea Klein and the architect adapted from a church she’d spotted during a trip to Portugal. “I really tried to keep this modern house very cozy,” says the author, describing the generous use of wood throughout: cedar ceilings, teak doors, wide-plank limed oak for the bedroom floors. Radiant heat warms the cement and white limestone underfoot in the living area, where the kitchen is open for all to see. “Some people don’t like looking at their things,” Klein says. “I like seeing my glassware and dishes.”

While construction was under way, the new homeowner orchestrated her plans for furnishings, art, and landscaping so everything would be ready when the house was finished. She commissioned a simple dining table from Lars Bolander and paired it with chairs from Restoration Hardware; she picked up teak pieces for the terrace from Donna Karan’s Urban Zen; she gathered several large-scale photographs from her collection, including one of resplendently feathery poultry by Jean Pagliuso, for her office/TV room. A nice surprise for Lukas was the car-shaped pine bed, designed by 1100 Architect, that he found in his new bedroom several weeks after they’d moved in. His mother’s bedroom has an outdoor shower with glorious views of passing boats and the sunset. And in the backyard, she installed a crisply detailed European-edge pool surrounded by lawn—then strategically planted palms and a sculptural sea grape tree.

Kelly Klein represents the new wave in Palm Beach: She’s at home most nights, with Lukas asleep by seven. When she entertains, it is often on a small scale, just a few friends for an alfresco lunch or dinner. And the lady who once famously owned the Duchess of Windsor’s pearls, well, has she worn a ball gown out on the town yet? She laughs. She hasn’t. “And I can’t imagine I ever will.”

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