The Coolest Way to Live Small

“The goal is to be happy, right?” Greg Chait asks. He's trying to convince me that his beach shack in the elite Malibu trailer park known as Paradise Cove is all he needs. “Keep it simple,” he says. “That's what I want.”

The home is indeed simple: a one-story rectangular abode with low-slung ceilings, a wooden deck out back, an outdoor shower, and two small bedrooms. But the Elder Statesman founder isn't the average American trailer-park resident, and this isn't the average American trailer park. Matthew McConaughey has reportedly lived here, for starters. And it's been called the “hippest neighborhood in Malibu.” But all that aside, this little community of million-dollar homes tucked between multi-million-dollar homes is an idyllic escape from the fuss of nearby Los Angeles.

“It's supposed to be like this,” he says, meaning: slightly tacky. He steps off the front porch into the kitchen that's been partially renovated to update the original design, which dates from 1968, when the place was built. He left the original wood floors and chose not to raise the ceilings, as many of his neighbors have over the years.

So yeah, it's humble and modestly appointed, but it's also draped in insanely luxurious hand-dyed cashmere. The stuff is everywhere. A blanket tossed haphazardly across the bed. Psychedelic couch cushions on the custom-built wood furniture. A floor-length robe hanging casually on a door.

Chait started The Elder Statesman in 2007 with a line of cashmere blankets. Today he has a factory in Culver City and around 50 employees who design and knit everything from vibrantly colored socks and ponchos and hoodies to trippy stuffed animals and sculptural furniture. The outpost in West Hollywood acts as a retail shrine for cashmere lovers.

When Chait bought the place, four years ago, he wanted a safe haven for himself and his 8-year-old daughter, Dorothy. “Everybody around here just looks out for each other,” he says. (One neighbor, an ophthalmologist, will soon perform eye surgery on Chait so he can see where he's going when he surfs—“I'm totally blind out there!”) It's not exactly an undiscovered beachside utopia, but Dorothy can roam freely and he can beat the crowd to surf in the morning. “Small spaces create close relationships,” he says. They also force a certain aesthetically pleasing kind of minimalism. One lamp or vase too many in a place this small and you step onto the precarious path toward hoarderdom.

“I'm super fucking happy,” Chait says. “I don't even know what I want—I have what I want.” A few hundred square feet, a golf cart, and a dozen or so surfboards, it seems, is plenty.

Noah Johnson is a GQ senior style editor.

This story originally appeared in the September 2018 issue with the title "The Coolest Way to Live Small."