N.Y. Times: He Grew Up in Chadds Ford as the Only Child of Estonian Immigrants. Today, He’s a Trendsetter

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menswear store
Image via Freemans Sporting Club.

Taavo Somer grew up in Chadds Ford as the only child of Estonian immigrants.

Today, he’s a trendsetting restauranteur, fashion designer, and entrepreneur in New York City, responsible for heritage chic and the urban woodsman look on the Lower East Side in the early 2000s, writes Alex Williams for The New York Times.

There’s his nouveau-retro restaurant, Freemans, at the back of Freemans Alley and Freemans Sporting Club, home to his menswear label.

He drew on Chadds Ford’s Revolutionary War-era Americana to transform a cafeteria into Freemans, in the style of a Colonial hunting club.

Now, he’s set his eye on golf.

Somer, 48, and his partners have created a country club: Inness, a 220-acre resort in the Hudson Valley town of Accord, N.Y., with a nine-hole golf course.

Somer doesn’t play golf.

“What I connect with is that it looks like a park,” he said. “Maybe this is naïve, but I think that one of the big draws for golfers to a golf course is the natural environment. I think it also happens with fishing or hunting, too.”

He hopes Inness will feel like a modern Catskills family resort from the 1960s.

Read more about Taavo Somer in The New York Times.

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