Andrea Brown, owner of the Victoria’s Mother boutique in East Hampton and later Southampton, died on Sunday at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Westhampton Beach after a short illness.
Born Andrea Victoria Samagochian on April 13, 1939, to Arthur Samagochian and the former Victoria Janoian, she grew up in Detroit, spending her summers with grandparents in Brantford, Ontario. She graduated from Cass Tech High School, where she met David Lee Brown, whom she married in 1960, after studying for two years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
They lived in Michigan while Mr. Brown studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, then in Massachusetts when he was head of the design department at the Worcester Craft Center, and settled in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill, where he began his career as a sculptor. During this time, Ms. Brown worked as a freelance graphic designer and “as the lifelong curator of their singular living spaces; their brownstone in Brooklyn was featured in Apartment Life magazine and their houses were frequently included on the tours of artists houses and studios popular in the 1970s and ’80s,” according to their daughter, Victoria Brown.
After visiting Mr. Brown’s gallerist in Water Mill and spending time with their fellow artists here, they fell in love with the South Fork. In the early 1970s, “they bought a house (which turned out to have a basement full of preserves from the 1950s) and barn on Fort Pond Boulevard in Springs, which they spent summers and weekends renovating,” their daughter wrote.
“Mr. Brown was beginning to be awarded many large-scale commissions able to be completed more easily in East Hampton than in his studio in Brooklyn, and they decided to try ‘not going back’ in the fall of 1973,” their daughter wrote. They moved to an old farmhouse on Fireplace Road, where Mr. Brown “built a new studio, they raised their daughter, planted an impressive garden, and enjoyed the companionship of their pets — always a dog, sometimes a rabbit, a hamster, hermit crabs who she couldn’t abide, two parakeets, and a locally famous duck named Duddle.”
After stints managing the gift shops at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum and Guild Hall, Ms. Brown opened Victoria’s Mother in 1976. Originally located down a walkway off Newtown Lane, later moving to Main Street, “the shop became a local institution adored by generations of locals and visitors,” her daughter wrote. “She was proud to be part of the fabric of the community, helping families mark milestones by offering the perfect gift, by stocking vintage postcards of East Hampton, jewelry, hair endazzlements, home accessories, and ‘everything you didn’t know you needed.’ ”
The shop also “enjoyed a robust presence ‘on the road’ for many years when it was recreated at the Hampton Classic Horse Show.”
Ms. Brown and her husband, who died in 2016, moved to Southampton in 2004 after she fell in love with a house there. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son-in-law, Allan Chochinov, and a granddaughter, Bronwyn Elvis Chochinov, all of New York City.
