At the Hampton Bays home of Frédéric and Marie Malle, the water looms large, if deceptively so. Beyond swaths of wild grasses and shrubs, the East End’s famously wide sky meets the Great Peconic’s deep-blue depths in a postcard-perfect horizon line. But meander toward it and you’ll find there’s a ways to go yet, that verdant expanse concealing the steep sandy bluff and the many flights of stairs you must descend to reach the gentle tides—what is now, for the couple, a cherished act of delayed gratification.

— See the pictures that show where your perfume dollars went, in Legendary Perfumer Frédéric Malle Takes Us Inside His Romantic Hamptons House at Architectural Digest.