Swedish design is often interpreted to mean stark white-on-white palettes and crisp lines, but a Hamptons hotel is aiming to change the way Americans think about Scandinavian style. The Maidstone Hotel is owned by Stockholm-born Jenny Ljungberg, who emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager and was surprised by her fellow students' interest in her Swedish clothes and shoes. The Maidstone represents Ljungberg's vision of Swedish design—whimsical, colorful, and full of mixed patterns. Each room is named after and has design elements inspired by a different notable Scandinavian, from Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie to Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. "The biggest misconception is that people think that Swedes live straight out of an Ikea home," Ljungberg tells Condé Nast Traveler. "If you look at Scandinavian homes, a lot of it is things we inherited from our parents and grandparents, a lot is vintage and eclectic. I wanted to mix the old and the new, because that is what Swedish design is about...I wanted to show a different part of Sweden, not the one you see in design magazines. It's more accessible for guests."
One of The Maidstone's most loyal guests is Carl Waldekranz, a Swede who moved to New York City in early 2015. He is the founder of Tictail, an online platform similar to Etsy where makers from around the world sell their products. The company recently raised $22 million in venture capital funding, and many of its vendors are Swedish or Scandinavian. On a trip to The Maidstone with his girlfriend, Waldekranz realized that the hotel and his business had quite a bit in common.
An idea was hatched: an online shop filled with all the Scandinavian accessories and housewares sold at the Maidstone. "The Hamptons feels a lot like Swedish nature, so coming out there seeing the beautful water felt like home," Waldekranz says. "We immediately fell in love with it. Then I realized they had a fantastic boutique with some of my favorite Swedish brands, and the products they had chosen fell in line with the kinds of products being sold on Tictail. I saw a huge audience and interest for those products in the States, and that's when we started talking about collaborating, to tell the story of The Maidstone as a hotel."
In the hotel's lobby, Maidstone visitors could always pick up tins of the hotel's custom tea blends, as well as the wooden clogs provided to every guest upon check-in. Now, guests may also stock up on Tictail-curated products that marry Swedish style and travel-ready utility, including sturdy Sandqvist backpacks, Stutterheim unisex raincoats in hunter green and burgundy, strappy sandals from Hasbeens, and Bjork & Berries eco-friendly hand lotions that contain Nordic ingredients like sea buckthorn. While some of the brands, like Hasbeens, are well-known to American consumers, others do not ship to the U.S. or have limited distribution outside of Sweden. And even if Maidstone guests don't end up purchasing anything during their stay, Waldekranz reasons, they will become aware of Tictail and possibly shop the site once they return home.
The Tictail-Maidstone shop may be about brand awareness, but on a deeper level, it's about changing the stereotype of Sweden as sterile and brisk. For Ljungberg, who regularly visits her native country and is now raising her two young daughters to speak Swedish, it's also about instilling a sense of pride in a group of people who are not necessarily raised to be proud of themselves. "Swedes aren't proud of themselves, they don’t talk about their heritage. It’s how we’re raised," Ljungberg says. "But growing up in the States I realized it was something special. It’s cool to see that it has taken off."