We See What Happens On The Couch

two white ladies sitting on a large foam f------g couch by john chamberlain draped with white fabric, in a converted riding ring on shelter island, with four large chamberlain sculptures behind them. — You can change the color On The Couch: Alexandra Fairweather & Sasha Bikoff on On The Couch via youtube

It’s like being a nepo-baby, having a John Chamberlain couch: it takes a lot of work to keep it from being your entire personality. And even then you’re still not going to escape it entirely. So you just acknowledge it and carry on. And maybe make a podcast about it.

two ladies sitting on a large foam f------g couch by john chamberlain draped with cotton candy pink fabric, in a converted riding ring on shelter island, with four large chamberlain sculptures behind them. — Think pink: Alexandra Fairweather and Akari Endo-Gaut on On The Couch via youtube

Not every episode of Season 1 of On The Couch, the John Chamberlain Estate’s new podcast, begins with Estate director and Chamberlain’s stepdaughter Alexandra Fairweather asking her guest if they’ve ever sat on a John Chamberlain couch before? What do they think? I grew up on this couch.

Only most of them do.

a white lady and the most white guy artist and his dog sitting on a large foam f------g couch by john chamberlain draped with emerald green fabric, in a converted riding ring on shelter island, with four large chamberlain sculptures behind them. — Green as in money: Alexandra Fairweather and Daniel Arsham On The Couch via youtube

Sometimes Fairweather waits, confident that it’ll come up organically. Like halfway through the foamy conversation with decorator Sasha Bikoff about art and design and collectable design really elevating a space, and Chamberlain first made this couch out of necessity, how do you pick great pieces for your spaces?

This wide-ranging flexibility is of a piece with the relaxed, curiosity-driven conversations a Chamberlain couch naturally spawns. Far from being an exercise in attention-seeking or mutual flattery, Fairweather’s chill, open interviewing style lets her guest creatives—designers, stylists, artists, artists of a sort, a gastronomer, a Sotheby’s Magazine writer—recount their creative journeys in their own way, and wherever they may lead: whether it’s to, from or around the Hamptons.

When you’re the ARS IP holder, they let you do it: Alexandra Fairweather and, I think, her then-fiancé Eric on a jetski “Racing to be in Southampton by midnight…” and John Chamberlain’s Peaudesoiemusic (2011), © Fairweather & Fairweather LTD, on the cover of Fairweather Magazine, via KDHamptons

On The Couch extends naturally from Fairweather’s own pre-pandemic journey as a Hamptons luxury lifestyle content producer at Fairweather Magazine, where she interviewed designers, artists, and chefs on stage at art, film, and charity events. And it expands on the Chamberlain Estate’s campaign of scintillating dinner parties and Sotheby’s magazine articles by Shelter Island neighbors to build excitement for the artist’s centennial year in 2027 and a Sotheby’s show and sale of Estate work opening in ten days.

detail of a Ben Rosser photo of an unidentified guest rawdogging his Belgians on the Chamberlain in the presence of the Chamberlain Estate director herself, in lilac, above 📷: BFA via Vogue

“Chamberlain’s couches were central to our family life…I grew up on them when we lived at the de Koonings’ home in East Hampton, and Chamberlain even made me a mini couch for my crib,” Alexandra Fairweather told Artnet and which also mentioned in one interview. She was already like six when her mother married Chamberlain in 1996, she did not go on to say. Artnet reports the second season of On The Couch was supposed to record this summer, and that, like the leaves on the trees over a Chamberlain couch that’s been dragged outside for a podcast, they will drop this fall.