A great room is like a fabulous dinner party: The guest list encompasses a broad array of fascinating figures, each with a singular point of view; there is both harmony and a welcome degree of friction in the conversation; and a handful of unexpected, oddball characters turn up to keep the proceedings from becoming too polite. By that measure, the dazzling Los Angeles home of Tinder founder Sean Rad and his wife, fashion designer Lizzie Grover Rad, is the hottest ticket in town. Chockablock with myriad treasures both familiar and obscure, the house gathers strength not simply from its blockbuster lineup of design luminaries but from the surprising affinities, interwoven narratives, and intriguing juxtapositions orchestrated by AD100 designer Jane Hallworth. In short, it’s a knockout.
“You can’t make a house like this without clients who are willing to take risks and break a few rules, clients committed to living with beautiful things they truly appreciate and understand,” Hallworth says. “Lizzie grew up in Virginia, very East Coast. She’s got a mellow-chic sensibility that can veer off into the eccentric. Sean is an L.A. guy with a more minimalist style and a kind of magpie fascination with strange, wonderful objects. The house spins those different threads together in a way that feels youthful but sophisticated,” the designer adds.
The couple’s idiosyncratic personal tastes come into full flower in the decor of their home offices—spaces that rarely grab top billing in a typical house story. Rad’s lair, wrapped in an envelope of reclaimed French oak, feels ready-made for a modern captain of industry. A monumental Georg Baselitz canvas hangs behind a George Nakashima dining table repurposed as a desk, surrounded by estimable pieces by Tobia Scarpa, Poul Kjærholm, Marcel Breuer, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, and Jean Prouvé. Elevated on a bespoke wood pedestal, a vintage late-1970s Apple II computer—a 30th-birthday gift from Grover Rad—nods to her husband’s roots in tech. “I’ve been working out of hotels and boxes for years. I never had a proper office before, so I wanted to create a space that would inspire me and the people I work with,” says the tenacious entrepreneur, who parted ways with Tinder in 2017 and now runs Rad Fund, a private investment company.
Grover Rad’s office, meanwhile, features a massive disco ball, hand-distressed by Grover Rad herself with coatings of espresso powder, alongside signature furnishings by Osvaldo Borsani, Gio Ponti, Gabriella Crespi, and a host of lesser-known creators of objets de vertu. The ensemble sits on an ice floe of sheepskin carpets proudly procured from IKEA and Costco. Positioned behind her Carl Malmsten desk—where she’s currently plotting the 2022 launch of her namesake fashion brand, Grover Rad—a George Condo painting titled Interacting Figures makes a provocative backdrop for Zoom meetings. “Sean had zero input here. This was my opportunity to express my maximalist self,” she admits.
While most designers typically reserve their choicest finds and most dramatic gestures for a home’s main social arena, Hallworth took a quieter approach to the double-height living room. The first major piece she and her clients acquired for the space was a 16th-century marble water-well head from Italy, repurposed as a planter for a towering ficus tree and festooned with acanthus leaves, lion heads, and other classical ornaments. “I didn’t want to do some big statement light fixture that would suck up all the energy and focus,” the designer explains. “The tree tempers the scale of the room, and that gorgeous, craggy planter makes a lovely counterpoint to the silvery Vincenzo De Cotiis cocktail table, which feels like a heraldic shield bouncing natural light into the room.”
Of course, if it’s drama and wonder you’re looking for, there’s plenty to be found elsewhere in the home: in the kitchen’s sensuous, Rorschach-like marble treatment and bronze cabinetry; in the rare, futuristic 1930s Poul Henningsen grand piano that anchors the music room (Rad is an accomplished composer and musician); in the Carlo Bugatti table that holds the whiskey decanter in the bar; and in the ballet of swirling, skirted, mechanized pendant lights by Studio Drift in the entry hall. For sheer jaw-dropping astonishment, however, there’s no topping the gloriously decadent primary bath, wrapped in a cocoon of Breccia Capraia marble, with a monolithic tub carved from a single block of stone and a marble chaise longue installed in the steam shower—Hallworth’s tip of the hat to Le Corbusier’s bathroom at the Villa Savoye. “It’s over-the-top, but in the nicest possible way,” the designer observes wryly.
“Jane took me out of my comfort zone on this project. It’s the detail and care she put in, her refusal to compromise, that I respect so much,” Rad says, summing up the extraordinary design adventure. Grover Rad seconds the notion: “It’s inspiring to see how bold she’s willing to go. Jane comes up with insane ideas, insane stories, and as much as she values the integrity and authenticity of the house, the story she cares most about is the one we’re making together.”
