This Cult Danish Design Brand Has Opened Its First US Guesthouse in Upstate NY

And to think it all started with a trash can. I first met Danish lifestyle brand Vipp during the annual design festival “3 Days of Design” in Copenhagen. Last summer, I visited one of the company’s experiential spaces, the Vipp Garage, where a mid-century industrial building had been transformed into a stuffy Moroccan guest house. The acquisition was conceived in partnership with Studio KO, the Marrakech- and Paris-based architecture practice behind the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech and the Chiltern Firehouse in London, for which they unveiled Vipp’s signature modular V1 kitchen in a striking copper coating.

Vipp’s first product, the humble pedal bin, also came in luminous rose gold and was designed by Holger Nielsen in 1939. In 1932, Nelson won the lottery at the age of 17. His prize was a car – even though he didn’t have a driver’s license – instead he sold it and used the money to build a metal factory. When his wife Mary opened a hair salon in 1939, she asked her husband to build a litter box. Over the ensuing decades, Nelson’s design grew from a local corporate favorite to an international design icon (in 2009, it was even included in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art).

Today, Vipp is run by Nielsen’s grandsons, Kasper Egelund and Sofie Christensen Egelund, and produces everything from sofas and carpets to lighting and mugs. In 2014, Vipp opened its first hotel, a 592-square-foot steel pod in Lake Imeln, Sweden. The company’s portfolio has since expanded to a further 14 properties, often in off-the-beaten-track, nature-rich destinations such as Todos Santos on Mexico’s Pacific coast or Bruny Island in Tasmania.

defaultPhoto: Courtesy of Vipp

As a new fan of the Vipp universe, I was excited to learn that the company’s newest hotel will be opening in my backyard in the Catskills in the spring of 2026, and that I will be lucky enough to stay there this April. The 1,200-square-foot building sits next to a private pond on the edge of a forest in Pond Eddy, a hamlet in Sullivan County. After two hours of door-to-door driving (and then a scenic drive along the Delaware River), my husband, Craig, and I arrived at the Vipp Pavilion in our rental SUV, grateful for a recommendation to drive on the unpaved grounds.