THIS Is How You Do The Hamptons: Life Lessons From Model Kate Love

Photo Credit: Ben Draper

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER

PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DRAPER

STYLING JASON REMBERT

STYLING ASSISTANT KYLE NELSON

MAKEUP JULIETTE PERREUX

HAIR LEDORA FRANCIS

SHOT ON LOCATION AT ZZ’S CLUB, NEW YORK

Photo Credit: Ben Draper

Kate Love is a huge proponent of the power behind manifestation. When she truly wants to make her dreams a reality, she makes a vision board, and lets the universe do the work. After all, it’s how she and her husband, NBA star Kevin Love, would end up buying their Hamptons dream home.

The 36-year-old supermodel shares this from said home, which seems to fit her to a “T.” The Amagansett property is modern, airy, glass walled, and light wooded. From where she sits in a simple white T-shirt and gold jewelry, makeup-free, blonde hair tied back in a messy ponytail, she looks so perfectly at home that it almost appears as if the house was made for her.

Which is kind of the point she’s making, I suppose, as we discuss fate and pre-destination. Love, née Bock, first fell in love with the Hamptons during the pandemic, when she and her now-husband, who was then playing in Cleveland, made it their rented home base for the summer. “It was obviously such an intense, crazy time, but it also ended up being a magical experience,” she recalls, explaining that they found structure and serenity in the simplicity of life, quietly spending endless days enjoying one another.

They were renting at the time, but she could not forget one particular perfect property that she’d come across in her summer search. The owners had initially listed the Adam Jordan Architecture-designed house as a rental but removed it shortly thereafter for reasons unknown. Love, who says she’s “obsessed with home décor and architecture,” decided to save the images for future design inspiration anyway, and later, with the house still very much on her mind, decided to track down the owners in order to see it for herself, for the same reason. And then, something truly incredible happened: they needed to sell the property. “Magically, it all worked out,” she says now. “We got the house I wanted — it was not listed, not for sale, and not for rent — my dream house. We feel like it was meant to be with how it just fell into place.”

It’s hard to argue that point: the Amagansett house does seem destined to be hers. But perhaps it came to be so simply because she envisioned it to be.

“I’m a big dreamer; a vision board, save-ideas-and-concepts kind of person,” she admits, noting, “Whether it’s home décor, style, or environments, I constantly save imagery that I’m inspired by. I use Pinterest and save albums on Instagram a lot. I constantly categorize and obsessively organize albums of things that I love. And then, somehow, I’m attracting them into my life.”

Photo Credit: Ben Draper

I ask her to explain a recent instance and she cites her third and most recent cover for Sports Illustrated — her 11^th time shooting for the publication, and her first since giving birth to her daughter. [Incidentally, she graduated to SI “legend” status this year; her first photo shoot, back in 2013, earned her Rookie of the Year honors.] “I skipped the year I was pregnant because I really wasn’t feeling well, but by the time she was nine months old, I decided to shoot again because I was finally feeling like myself; my clothes were finally fitting the way I feel most comfortable. I felt good. [And during this shoot] I did what I always do: take my favorite screen grabs, do a little Canva edit, and draw it as if it were a cover. I’d be like, Oh my god, imagine if this was a cover? Imagine if this happened? And then it did.”

Life seems pretty great for Kate, who was first scouted at age 12 at a local swimming pool in her hometown of Vancouver, Canada. She signed a modeling contract and, by age 18, had moved to Paris to shoot for some of the top fashion publications in the world as well as campaigns for the likes of Victoria’s Secret, Brooks Brothers, L’Oréal, Kérastase, and Ralph Lauren. She met Miami Heat player Kevin, the nephew of Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love, in 2015, and had a fairytale, old school New York, glamour–inspired wedding at the New York Public Library in 2022. She gave birth to their daughter (whose name the couple doesn’t reveal for privacy reasons) a year later, during game four of the 2023 NBA Finals.

Just four days later after the Heat’s loss to the Denver Nuggets, both Kate and Kevin headed to The Hamptons with their newborn and Hungarian Vizsla, Vestry, in tow. And now, they’re back in the swing of things — if they could find their things, that is. Love is currently on the hunt for missing items, and in doing so, keeps coming across newborn clothing, which makes her think about how quickly the days have passed, and how rapidly her little girl is growing.

And although that’s a depressing thought as a parent, Love is beyond grateful that she’s living through an enjoyable phase of her child’s life — especially because her pregnancy was anything but a picnic. “I never got the pregnancy glow; I was really unwell the whole time,” she confides. “It wasn’t really a magical experience for me; I think it more so sucked the life out of me. During my pregnancy I was so sick, and postpartum, I thought I would feel myself again much sooner than I did.  I had to eat so many things that were off from my normal diet — I eat clean, grain-free, light — but to be able to feed my baby the way she needed, I had to eat [a higher] volume of heavy and calorie-dense foods. [It was] a choice I was happy to make, but it really kept me from feeling like my normal self; I felt off for so long. But now that I eat and exercise the way I like to, I feel so much better.”

Photo Credit: Ben Draper

And as much as her daughter is her world, Love is grateful to not physically be pregnant any longer. “Something that I found extremely challenging was that, for some reason, whenever anyone sees a pregnant person, they ask you, ‘How’s it going? How are you feeling?’ wanting to hear a positive answer. And when you’re literally throwing up or wanting to throw up, having constant and weird new symptoms like vertigo and hot sweats, telling people you feel good is a struggle. People would ask how I felt, and I’d feel awful. I felt miserable; this was not it for me. And then they’d look at me like there was something wrong with me, and that would make me feel worse. Like, I’m sorry that I’m disappointing you. And I did feel like I was constantly disappointing people.”

The thought seems to seriously stress her out, so thankfully, that’s in the past. Love is once again feeling great, healthy, happy, and most importantly, like herself. “I’m great now; I’m back!” she declares. “And I really think diet has so much to do with it. Food can be such a hard thing in life, but if you eat farm-fresh, less-packaged products, with fewer ingredients that are more high quality, you really feel so much better. And that’s one of the reasons we get so excited to come out here to the Hamptons. We go to the farmer’s market, the fish guy, the cheese shop, we grill fish and vegetables on the barbecue. Even the egg I had this morning was perfect. Eating this way makes you fuller, gives you more energy, makes your skin glow, makes you sleep better. The more I’ve taken care of myself, the more beautiful I feel.” [This is why, perhaps, she and Kevin have decided to become equity investors in healthy items they believe in, including Koia, a low-sugar, plant-based protein beverage, as well as Abby’s Better Nut Butter.]

So OK, at this specific moment, she’s not feeling 100 percent, but then, she’s running around trying to do it all. “Like, right now I’m setting up our house and taking care of our family; I’m running the show here and busier than normal, trying to get everything sorted and together. But I know that when I get a chance to have a good sleep, do a morning workout — a cardio class or a long beach walk from Atlantic Avenue Beach to Indian Wells Beach with the dog and the baby — if I do something to take care of myself, have a great breakfast, and get some sun, I know I’ll be my best self that day. It will come.”

Being in the Hamptons helps though, possibly because it reminds her of her happiest days, spent at summer camp for two months every year without fail. “Summer camp was my favorite place on earth; I lived for it,” she declares, adding, “I feel like the Hamptons is such a summer place, and I also feel so lucky that we’re at an age where a lot of our friends are having kids at the same time and are also choosing to spend summers out here. Here, I get to feel like we’re at summer camp. We do dinners every Friday, we meet on holidays, and it creates these summer memories that we get to have every year. We’ll meet friends at Duryea’s in Montauk or go to The Crow’s Nest for a cocktail by the water and [then have] dinner. We’ll hang out in Amagansett at Fini Pizza or il Buco al Mare. There’s also a little coffee shop, il Buco Vita, where we get a coffee and then walk the square and go to the little playground at the Amagansett School with our baby. It just gives this charming, cozy, family feel that is so nice.”
These days, the simplicity of just being together, with their baby and their dog, are the ones she lives for. Quality time with her husband, despite their busy, high-powered careers, is essential. How they spend the time they do have together is what counts — even if that means just having a quick, quiet breakfast together in the Amagansett sunshine.

Photo Credit: Ben Draper

“Although we both have chaotic schedules and travel a lot, we always check in with one another. And even if we’re apart, we FaceTime in the morning and we talk throughout the day on multiple platforms. I think there is something to that — time together. Like, ‘What do you need? What are you doing? When are you going to be back? I’ll do this, we’ll meet then.’ We just are very aware of each other’s schedules and prioritize each other in those schedules,” she notes.

So clearly, like her name implies, life is all love. Perhaps not especially because of her last name, though the perfection of it seems to be an added bonus for a woman so very good at manifestation. Which, she admits, she might have done here, too. “I’ve probably saved it on one of my mood boards somewhere, or maybe used beautiful imagery of love or hearts,” she confesses. “I can’t believe it’s my last name now; it’s such a good one. We feel really lucky as a couple and as a family, and I think that if you were around us, you would say we embody it.”

She pauses, and says with a smile, “We’re lucky to be in this beautiful place, creating these memories. We love it here, and we also love Miami because of the amazing restaurants and culture; there’s always something massive happening, so there’s always something to do. We can also choose to just stay in our cute little neighborhood and enjoy the beautiful weather outside with the baby and the dog, and that’s a treat in itself. [But] coming here feels like it’s summer, and summer to me means being a kid and having summer camp. It’s the epitome of life, because summer means happiness. I think we have a nice balance at the moment, and we’re really happy with it.”    

Photo Credit: Ben Draper