Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

The Hamptons are awash in shaker shingles and ultra-contemporary boxes. Houses of seven gables are as common as split-rail fences and manicured lawns.

But retail guru Kevin McLaughlin, 65, eschewed those design flourishes when dreaming up his family retreat in the hamlet of North Haven (nestled between Sag Harbor and Shelter Island).

Instead, he envisioned a modern farmhouse property with several dwellings — where his wife’s four siblings, their children and her parents could gather — a compound “where your in-laws could come out but not necessarily share the kitchen with you.”

McLaughlin (along with his brother Jay) is the co-founder of the preppy, print-happy J.McLaughlin clothing company, whose sunny stores are frequented by society ladies and college coeds alike. But his other passion is flipping houses.

He and his wife, Barbara, 53, had renovated and sold at least four homes out east before they realized that what they really were after — call it an industrial compound with an agrarian sensibility — didn’t exist. So in 2014, they bought two parcels, clocking in at just under 2 acres, adjacent to Barbara’s brother’s house, from a local fishing-concession-stand owner, who’d been using a five-car garage on the property for boat repairs. They then set about building what they expected to be their forever Hamptons home.

“It was actually our architect Doug Larson’s idea,” Kevin tells Alexa. “He had [previously] wanted to take agricultural buildings found in the Catskills and open them up like lofts for his own family.”

With that inspiration in mind, the couple gave Larson (of Tribeca-based Larson and Paul Architects) carte blanche to reimagine their property’s dilapidated garage, tear-down ranch house and overgrown meadow. “They were very generous — they let me try an experiment,” says Larson, who’s worked with the McLaughlins on six personal projects over the past 20 years and has designed nearly all of their 107 retail spaces.

In the fall of 2014, the architect sent plans for what he called the Steel House to Art Hance, a prefab-home dealer in New Jersey. Within a couple of months, a semi pulled up on the gravel driveway, carrying steel beams and eco-friendly insulated panels. A foundation was poured and, in a matter of two weeks, the Steel House went up “like an erector set,” says Kevin.

The erstwhile ranch and garage were also renovated and dubbed the Tower House and Pool House, respectively. The family — including 20-year-old daughter Madeline and 12-year-old son Hugh — moved into the new three-building retreat last August.

Through the yellow front door of the main Steel House, guest rooms are up the steps, with a kitchen just to the right (outfitted with sliding barn doors that shut out the commotion during parties); the rest of the action is straight ahead in the great room, bookended by slate fireplaces. Here, a cathedral ceiling rises 25 feet, and a western wall of glass slides fully open, bringing the outside in.

At the far end of the house are family quarters, with two bedrooms for the McLaughlin children and a master suite with a library.

Plumbing pipes act as handrails “to give an industrial but residential feel,” notes Kevin, while old scaffolding was repurposed as a top for a wrought-iron dining-room table. There’s an Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair clad in red linen, a mirror fabricated from a rotted tree trunk, and a faint nautical theme. Symbols and materials that relate to the J.McLaughlin lifestyle abound: bamboo, coral, botanicals, seascapes. Nothing matches, yet everything works.

“If you fill a house with things you like, it will always go together,” says Kevin.

Indeed, he and wife Barbara (who is president of the Fund for Park Avenue — the group responsible for all those gorgeous tulips lining the avenue) share a passion for collecting unusual objects, rotating them throughout the complex. Vintage wicker furniture is mixed with Deco lacquer tables and 1940s steel bed frames from France — all culled from estate sales, auction houses and the many warehouses J.McLaughlin uses to squirrel away furnishings for stores.

“I like to say I even got my wife at the auctions,” jokes Kevin, “since Barbara worked at Christie’s for 13 years, and I was the guy at the back waving a paddle.”

Beyond the dancing grass of the overgrown meadow is their uninsulated Pool House, strapped with wood like a corn crib and aglow at night from the twinkling lights strung inside.

The third point of the triangulated buildings is the Tower House, the former ranch now serving as guest house. This two-story, three-bedroom pavilion has a wraparound porch and a covered turret “that’s used more often for Nerf-gun wars than breakfast,” Barbara laughs, though she sometimes sneaks in to watch the sunrise above the bay through the trees.

“We really have an open-door policy; I have one friend who refers to the house as Yaddo of North Haven [referring to the famous artist’s colony] — she said she got to a critical point in her screenplay here,” Barbara recalls. “It’s a beautiful setting for inspiration and for having your friends around, while also having your own space.”

‘If you fill a house with things you like, it will always go together.’

She’s now fantasizing about throwing a grand birthday bash in July. “We are overdue for a party,” she says — the last time the whole clan gathered was for Thanksgiving. “Theirs is the rare extended family that actually gets along well,” marvels Kevin.

Indeed, being able to host the whole crew was a necessity for the home, and architect Larson says its pared-down design was inspired by simple materials, clean roof lines and elegant sequencing.

“I think it was a reaction to the excess of the Hamptons,” Larson notes. “People mistake spending a lot of money for having good taste, but they are not the same thing. You don’t have to have marble and brass and shingles to have a beautiful home. Sometimes simple is better, and more tasteful.”

The McLaughlins may adore their industrial farmhouse compound, but their flipping bug has yet to be cured. They recently purchased a derelict house on a peninsula in Sag Harbor that Kevin has had his eye on for a long time.

Which is why Barbara will savor every weekend she has this summer in the Steel House, making marmalade from the potted Meyer lemons that circle the pool and watching shadows play on the pergola, in the meadow, and on the trees that separate her home from her brother’s. “It’s quiet here. You can hear the crickets. You feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere even though you can walk to town,” she says.

But true to form, Kevin is excited to get started on his next, peninsular property. He’s pretty sure his wife will go along for the ride when the time comes to move again. “She enjoys the process,” he says. And Barbara can’t resist chiming in: “I can nest anywhere.”