June 7, 2026Monica Fried’s route to running her namesake interior design firm in the tony New York City suburb of Scarsdale was a circuitous one. Unlike many of her peers, she studied neither architecture nor art, instead graduating from Columbia University with a B.A. in political science and French followed by an M.B.A. in marketing. She joined the corporate world, launching American Express’s first website, then hired on at an early online marketing agency.
Along the way, she found an artistic diversion in creating the interiors of her own homes. “People would come over and say, ‘Who did your house?’ ” she recalls. “And I would say, ‘I did!’ ”
New York–based Monica Fried designed the interiors of a new Hamptons beach house in the Long Island hamlet of Water Mill. Top: The living room contains a MINOTTI sectional, an ANDRIANNA SHAMARIS coffee table, an ENZO BERTI chair and a Rotula floor lamp. The artwork above the sofa is by Gen Miyamura. Photos by Glen Allsop
About 20 years ago, after she’d stopped working in order to raise her children, she began taking on small design projects for friends — a room or two here, some striking accessories there. “Then, it started slowly growing,” she says, “where someone asked me to do a beach house for them, and then, someone referred me to another person to do their beach house.”
Before long, Fried had a full-fledged firm, which felt like her ideal second act. “I actually found that interior design, for me, was the perfect hybrid of creativity and business,” she says. “And I was able to scale it at the pace that I was comfortable with, and it was just great.
Fried collaborated on the house with Blaze Makoid, of New York’s BMA Architects.
“This is not an easy business,” she adds. “You’re dealing with clients and finances and architects and different personalities, and a huge part of this business is project management — making sure that you deliver not only a beautiful result but on time, on budget.”
Her management background makes her a natural for ground-up construction projects like an ultramodern, two-story weekend house she worked on for a longtime friend on Mecox Bay, in Water Mill, New York. Fried even accompanied her friend on her real-estate hunt in the Hamptons, then stayed involved throughout the custom design process with Blaze Makoid, of BMA Architects.
“She was coming from a much more traditional farmhouse-style house built in the eighteen hundreds, also in Water Mill and wanted something radically different,” Fried says of the client, whose primary residence is in Manhattan. They found a tear-down right on the water, a feature that was at the top of the client’s wish list.
A high-powered financier with two 20-something sons, the client is the daughter of an Air Force officer and spent part of her childhood in Japan. Her parents collected Japanese antiques and art, and their trove, plus her additions to it, in part inspired the house’s Japandi design.
A monumental fireplace separates the living area from the dining room.
“More than pretty, it’s dramatic — not your average beach house,” Fried says. “It’s a lot moodier and has a lot more soul or personality than most.”
Clean lines, a tightly edited, muted palette and walnut paneling inform the interiors of the five-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot house and contribute to the austere but serene aesthetic. So do the evocative details peppered throughout, including the client’s Tang dynasty stone Buddha, perched in a niche near the front door; a custom table with a boulder for its base, in the entry hall; a cane-and-walnut nightstand, in a bedroom; and Akari lamps by Isamu Noguchi, in the primary bedroom and kitchen. The kitchen’s three-sided wooden banquette, which surrounds a custom terrazzo table, is unupholstered, giving the space a no-nonsense vibe.
In the dining room, Apparatus pendants hang over a live-edge table surrounded by vintage Charlotte Perriand chairs. On the wall is a Japanese print from the client’s collection.
In most of the rooms, Fried orchestrated a subtle blend of vintage pieces, contemporary design and favorite items from the client’s holdings, often improvising her arrangements in the final stages of the project. “You can sometimes try to do things all at once,” she says, “but it’s also fun to collect individual pieces and then see how they all can look together.”
The dining room illustrates her process. The Japanese print on the wall was already in the client’s collection, the wood and metal table is contemporary, and the rattan chairs are vintage Charlotte Perriand, a serendipitous 11th-hour replacement for a set the client found at the Paris flea market.
Fried designed a wood banquette for the breakfast area, as well as a terrazzo-topped dining table. An AKARI LAMP by ISAMU NOGUCHI dangles from the ceiling above.
“We all agreed that the flea-market finds were wonderful, but they were lost in transit,” says Fried, who sourced the second set of Perriand seats through a European dealer. “It was a happy accident.”
Separated from the dining room by a sculptural off-black-plaster fireplace, the living area is done all in neutrals like gray, black and cream but with an array of textures: Channel-tufted Minotti sectional sofas sit with a charred-teak-wood coffee table by Andrianna Shamaris and a woven-cord Sitar chair by Enzo Berti, which Fried found on 1stDibs.
The kitchen’s cylindrical ceiling lights are from Lumfardo Luminaires. The counter stools are made of walnut and black leather.
“It’s a beautiful combination but also very livable, very comfortable,” she says.
She applied the same formula to the den, tucked away on the opposite side of the house. There, custom rattan panels distinguish the millwork, and a tile-topped table by Roger Capron, sourced on 1stDibs, makes a graphic statement between an inviting custom sofa and a black-leather chair and ottoman from Lawson-Fenning.
Left: Fried had the custom upholstered bed covered in a Holly Hunt fabric and repurposed a VINTAGE JAPANESE CHEST as a nightstand. The sconce is from Lumfardo Luminaires, and the bespoke wallpaper behind the headboard is from DE GOURNAY. Right: On the other side of the room, a Noguchi floor lamp stands beside a vintage rattan dresser.
Fried made the most of the property’s natural beauty and the walls of glass the architect created. In the primary suite — which is on the top floor, along with three other bedrooms and a gym — she wanted the views of the bay to remain unobstructed, so she designed a custom bed with a hidden feature: a TV that rises and retracts through a slot in the footboard. On the headboard wall, a de Gournay wallpaper with a motif of branches and birds complements the vintage Japanese chest that serves as a nightstand.
In the den, a Nobilis linen-upholstered custom sectional faces a Lawson-Fenning lounge chair and ottoman across a tile-topped coffee table. The ceiling light is by Serge Mouille.
Outdoors, where the landscaping has the unmistakable flair of a lush Japanese garden, Fried created adjoining dining and living areas on a covered patio off the living room. She also planted another dining table on a bed of stones surrounded by foliage and placed a pair of sculptural fiberglass loungers at one end of the long pool.
Lounge chairs and umbrellas line one side of the pool, which is nestled among gardens created by Southampton-based Araiys Design.
Together with her team of eight, Fried works mostly in the New York area, including the city, the Hamptons and Greenwich, Connecticut. If a repeat client asks her to do a second home in, say, Florida or California, she is happy to oblige, but she says she prefers to stay local. “We’re so hands-on with our projects that it’s really nice to be boots on the ground,” she explains. Plus, she adds, “I’m trying to keep it, like, not too crazy.”
