TASTEMAKERS

A WORLD-RENOWNED DESIGNER DELIVERS PRACTICALITY WITH SUPERIOR CRAFTMANSHIP

"My approach to design is incredibly practical," says Southampton resident Bill Sofield, whose interior design company, Studio Sofield, has an international client roster that includes Baker Furniture, Sean "Diddy" Combs, David Barton Gyms, Nathan Lane and the Gucci Group, for which he's created more than 400 stores and counting. "There are certain designers people go to because they do a particular thing really well, but I'm not like that. I don't have any preconceived idea about what I should be doing."

In many ways, Sofield's career path has mirrored his design philosophy. Growing up in Metuchen, N.J., he knew by the age of five he wanted to be an architect. "I was always fascinated by it," he says. "My mother grew up in Roxbury, Mass., and would talk about all the Gatsby-esque mansions there." After graduating from Princeton in 1983 with a degree in architecture and urban planning, Sofield received a Helena Rubinstein Foundation grant through the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he organized exhibitions on both art and architecture.

During this time, Sofield also worked for two large architecture firms, but wasn't satisfied. "I left the old-boy firm where every project ended with a lawsuit and started at another firm where everything they did was gilded or had a tassel," he says.

One day on a job at a Park Avenue apartment, Sofield met an elderly Italian woodworker named Ignacio, who was a master craftsman at a woodworking collective on the Upper East Side.