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Inside the Toms Shoes Founder's "Contemporary Barn" in Topanga Canyon

This Topanga Canyon house is basically where a person familiar with the Toms Shoes brand would expect its founder to live in. (Toms operates on the "buy one, give one" model that sends shoes to shoeless people around the globe.) Located in the corner of Los Angeles famously associated with hippies and artists, Blake Mycoskies's 1970s-era house, seen in Architectural Digest, is "built in a style one might call contemporary barn," and sits on a one-and-a-half acre site with oaks and a creek running through it.

The structure was completely overhauled by Mycoskie and his wife, Heather, with the help of local design studio Hammer and Spear, which had the task of wrangling all the esoteric items that the couple wanted to include in their house while keeping the place from looking like "a bohemian Colonial Williamsburg."

No small task. The interior features walls and beams made from salvaged barn siding, a "Native American–themed ceiling," and a sofa made by covering a steel frame with an old World War II tent. These new items coexist in the house with lots of objects that carry big significance for the couple, like the entry hall flooring, which is made from actual planks from the Coney Island boardwalk (Heather's grandparents met there). The master bathroom has "rustic Indian doors" and Blake's office has a desk from Bali—both souvenirs from the couple's globetrotting. The end result is, somehow, fabulous.


· Toms Founder Blake Mycoskie Takes AD on a Tour of His Los Angeles House [AD]