The algorithm doesn’t lie. Slowly but surely, the Explore grid on Eva Chen’s Instagram feed morphed from shoes, bags and beauty serums into ceramics, mirrors and house tours. Meanwhile, words like patina and names like Paul McCobb began to pepper her conversations and thoughts. All signs pointed to her latest project: the renovation of a Connecticut country home for her young family.
For Chen, a born-and-raised New Yorker and style maven who now works as Instagram’s director of fashion and shopping partnerships, these new-found fixations marked an even larger shift. “I grew up a first-generation American in Greenwich Village and didn’t know a landscape beyond Manhattan,” she reflects. “To me, nature was Washington Square Park.” A weekend at Troutbeck hotel with her husband, Thomas Bannister, an advertising creative director, introduced…
