Contained in the Dashing Los Angeles Pad of Tinder Cofounder Sean Rad and his Spouse Lizzie Grover Rad
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 cofounder 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.
Rad’s office is outfitted with a George Nakashima table, Tobia Scarpa lounge chairs, a daybed by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, a Pierre Jeanneret bookcase, and Marcel Breuer table lamps. The painting is by Georg Baselitz. The 1970s Apple II computer was a gift from his wife.
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.
The primary bath is clad in slabs of Breccia Capraia marble, with a tub carved from a single block of stone. Waterworks fixtures.
A 17th-century French sculpture from Obsolete commands the hallway to the guest rooms. The sconces are by Charlotte Perriand.
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.”
