Insiders Share Their Personal Guides to Their Favorite Places Around the World

Veere Grenney | Tangier, Morocco

For designer Veere Grenney, the coastal Moroccan city of Tangier has been a place of escape and inspiration for almost half a century. His breathtaking house there, which is featured in his new book, Veere Grenney Home: Seeking Beauty (Vendome), captures the bohemian, world-traveled aesthetic he loves.

I’ve been trying to define what makes Tangier so popular among decorators, writers, and other creatives, and it’s because it’s still authentic and original. The place fuses with the 20th century but also an ancient way of life. It’s a great mishmash of things.

Often I wonder how my love for Morocco began. Maybe it was the Rolling Stones being there in the ’60s, and David Crosby and Stephen Stills were there, and the Gettys. Maybe I picked up on that cool hippie vibe, because Tangier was always this loose place, very alternative. I lived in Morocco for nine months when I was 22, and it completely captivated me.

When I first arrived in Tangier, this man on the beach, who was an antiques dealer and interior decorator from London and worked for John Fowler, invited me to dinner at his home. It was a wonderful colonial house built around 1900 with pillars and a lovely garden in the middle. It was an old and crumbling house filled with beautiful English furniture and pictures. That day I remember thinking, This is the world I want to be in.

About 12 years ago, I decided to buy this funny little cottage that’s actually very chic on two and a half acres of land on a clifftop just outside the city. Over five years I rebuilt it and probably made it six times bigger and added a fantastic terraced garden. My style is a bit of everything—a bit of decoration but lots of hippie Moroccan and Indian bits.

In the summer, we have this extraordinary event for charity. Choreographer Rob Ashford and landscape designer Madison Cox put on a play or a musical, and it’s all done in my garden. So many decorators come—Michael S. Smith, Steven Gambrel, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, David Kleinberg, to name a few.

The best restaurants are El Morocco Club, where there’s a great bar downstairs, a cool restaurant upstairs, and an outdoor café, and there’s also a place right on the beach called L’Océan, which is perfect in the summer or winter.

In the medina, there are good shops. There’s a marvelous perfume shop called Madini; there are a handful of quality antique dealers. There’s a place for lovely woven cloth and people who make extraordinary straw baskets. And there are a few groovy boutiques like Topolina, which is owned by a Frenchwoman, selling slightly outrageous fashion.

Renée Cox | The Hamptons, New York

For Renée Cox, a Jamaican-born artist who lives in New York, the Hamptons has been providing a creative and spiritual outlet since 1989, when she bought her home in Amagansett with her husband.

My first real orientation with the Hamptons was in the  late 1980s, when we would come out on weekends with friends and camp on the beach, back when you could do that. That was my multimillion-dollar view, right there. For me, the Hamptons is all about experiencing the beauty of nature and the landscape. Many artists are heading to the Catskills now, but I need to be by the coast.

I like to surf a lot, and the best beaches for that are Ditch Plains in Montauk and the beach between Amagansett and East Hampton. The beaches are beautiful because of the dunes; they’re wide and untrampled, and most importantly, they’re far from the city so the water is clean.

Summer is all about hosting friends and entertaining at home. Over the years, I’ve had artist friends like Sanford Biggers, Derrick Adams, Deborah Willis, and Dread Scott out there. At home, I’ll do my Jamaican thing. I’ll cook a feast of salt fish, breadfruit, escovitch, fried sweet plantains, and my famous banana fritters. Jamaican food is rich in flavor with a spicy bite to it. My guests lap it up like there is no tomorrow, and sometimes there is none left for me.

For fresh produce, there are some wonderful farmers markets, like the one in Sag Harbor on Saturday mornings. Someone there makes a homemade ginger drink, which you can add some white rum to if you like. If you have any ailment, that’s certainly going to cure it.

There are many great restaurants, too, of course. Some of my favorites are Sant Ambroeus in East Hampton, the East Hampton Grill (especially the barbecue ribs), and the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. For Japanese, I like Kissaki sushi in Water Mill and Sen in Sag Harbor. Sunset Beach on Shelter Island is great for a sunset drink. I also like Navy Beach in Montauk, which is low key with a rustic feel and tables right on a small beach by Fort Pond Bay.

If I have friends visiting for a day, I’ll take them for a drive and we will walk along the remote Walking Dunes Trail, which is in Hither Hills State Park. We’ll snap photos; everything with me is a photo shoot. If you’re into conspiracy theories, there’s Camp Hero State Park in Montauk, an abandoned Air Force base and the site of the so-called Montauk Project, allegedly involving time travel during World War II. I’ll also take guests to Stephen Talkhouse, a live music venue in Amagansett, or we’ll visit Wölffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack.

For the art scene, there’s the newly renovated Guild Hall in East Hampton, where I had my retrospective “A Proof of Being” last summer, or I’ll go to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. The LongHouse Reserve is awesome, and the Pollock-Krasner House, the former studio of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, is cool to see.

Howard Cushing | Newport, Rhode Island

Howard Cushing grew up summering at his family’s historic home, The Ledges, in Newport, Rhode Island. Now he’s moved his young family there and opened Gardiner House, a charming and ambitious 21-room hotel that captures the seaport’s unique charm.

Newport is a deeply layered and historical place. It’s one of the largest, if not largest, perfectly preserved examples of Colonial and late 19th-century Stick architecture. You have the evolution of the robber barons, the Gilded Age, and the America’s Cup. But you also have other storylines people don’t know as much about—like the Tennis Hall of Fame and the fact that the first U.S. Open in golf was played at the Newport Country Club.

There’s an amazing music culture here with one of the top music festivals, the Newport Folk Festival, at Fort Adams. Overlooking the harbor, it’s the most glorious backdrop for music.

My dream day would start with a trip around Ocean Drive, with its spectacular homes and beautiful little coves with lobster boats, sandy beaches, and such blue water. The second component would be to see Newport from the water—from a sailboat, fishing boat, or kayak. There’s a serenity from that vantage point. The third part would involve a social aspect: going out to restaurants or hearing music.

When it comes to restaurants, you must visit the Midtown Oyster Bar. Talk to the oyster shucker and see what they just brought in that day. The chowder at The Black Pearl is also a must and the oyster bar at the Clarke Cooke House.

At Gardiner House, we wanted to re-create the idea of walking into one of these grand Newport homes that have a story to tell. You’re fully immersed in the art, texture, color, and design. The property has ties to the America’s Cup, and the Challenger boats were launched from here, but it was just a parking lot when we bought it. We worked with Kevin Greenberg’s firm, Space Exploration, out of Brooklyn to make the design relevant for today but have a timeless chic feel.

Art is a big component in Newport and in the hotel. There’s a mural by my great-grandfather Howard Gardiner Cushing, who was a famous Newport painter, in our original family home, which dates from 1905. We enlisted twenty2 to digitally restore and print it as wallpaper for the entry at Gardiner House. All the corridors were designed to have gallery lighting, so we can rotate works by local artists in and out.

Our bar has a signature cocktail called the Gardiner by our head bartender, John Begin, who is also the caretaker of Rose Island, which is this crazy, cool little island with an old lighthouse. He has been harvesting wildflowers to put in this vodka-based drink.

For me, there’s nothing better than a great surf day, and we get a lot of them in late summer. Ruggles is one of the most famous surf breaks in the country, with the incredible backdrop of the Vanderbilt mansion The Breakers on Cliff Walk. My favorite break is probably Second Beach, and Bailey’s gets some nice ones, too.

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Summer Issue under the headline “Tours de Force.” Subscribe to the magazine.