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A Rolleiflex camera, stacks of neon Surfer’s Journal back issues, a teapot by street artist Todd James, and framed Mogwai albums—a quick look around creative wonder woman Claire Darrow Mosier’s terraced home reveals a worldly and decidedly chill counterpoint to the surrounding stateliness of London’s Primrose Hill neighborhood. She and her husband, photographer Christopher Mosier, along with their daughters, Scout and Esme, live on the top three floors of a mid-19th-century building filled with intricate crown moldings and grand mantelpieces. “I adore the still-intact historical details,” says Mosier. “We are just totally happy hanging out here.”
A short stroll through Regent’s Park, and Mosier is at her office at Chiltern Firehouse, the 1889 fire station–turned–boutique hotel with 26 perpetually sold-out rooms. As the creative right hand of master hotelier André Balazs—a post she has held for the past 20 years; he calls her his “secret weapon”—Mosier has helped create iconic institutions like New York’s Mercer Hotel and L.A.’s Chateau Marmont. The Chiltern is no exception, with an over-the-top yet utterly charming mix of chintz carpeting; dimly lit Bavarian reading lamps placed in all the right corners; and a rotating cast of rock stars, It girls, and theatrical characters.
“My official title is kind of vague, but essentially I oversee all the visuals and aesthetics at our properties,” Mosier explains. This means every detail—from stocking the rooms with covetable matchbooks and filling the gift shops with need-to-know designers to commissioning new-wave artists to paint murals around the spaces. Under her guidance, Chiltern is now a buzzing counterpoint to Marylebone’s rows of Edwardian mews homes and quiet community of shopkeepers.
It was Balazs who suggested the family move from New York’s Lower East Side to London five years ago, while Mosier was traveling back and forth during the beginning stages of the Chiltern renovation. “André is like family, so I trusted him that we would love it, and he was right,” she says. Another perk of their adopted city: “It’s really convenient for scoping out new surf towns and little hippie hideaways in other parts of Europe, just a short flight away.”
The majority of pieces scattered throughout the family’s home was scooped up on their many travels—like a vintage Brazilian chair Mosier bought at the airport in Reykjavík and a set of black-and-white trays scored at a supermarket in Sweden. Mixed in are things that simply fit with their life. In the living room, the velvet couch in rich purple gets points for being “surprisingly spill-proof and stain resistant,” while the slim, oblong coffee table was purchased for having kid-friendly rounded corners. “The design in our home is really just an honest reflection of our family and whatever works for us,” says Mosier, adding, “I work at a place that has a pretty lively and maximalist mood, so I’m more of a minimalist whenever I am off the clock.”
The one rule she strictly abides by? “Everything that comes in must have sentimental meaning. Otherwise, too much stuff floods in!” In the girls’ bedroom, Snoopy-style prints and dolls by artist KAWS were birthday presents to Scout, an avid ukulele and guitar player. At Mosier’s bedside table sits a framed print of her name scrawled in bright graffiti—a gift from José Parlá, sketched on Chateau Marmont stationery while he was staying there. “Most of our really good friends are artists, and I love having their pieces surround me,” she says.
Another unmistakable totem is the collection of gigantic longboards leaning against the wall. “We still have a small surf shack in Costa Rica where we like to bum around,” says Mosier, “but right now I’m pretty psyched for just hanging by the fireplace in our living room.”
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2017 issue with the headline New Wave Nomad.