OUR FASHION EDITOR GOT TO SPEND A LITTLE TIME WITH CURRINGTON. THIS IS WHAT SHE THOUGHT. SIMPLE STYLE Upon meeting Mr. Currington you immediately get a sense for his laid back, surfer boy, no fuss kinda style. You first notice his curly, tousled, sun bleached hair and barefooted-ness amidst the surfer “grom” style swim trunks and perfectly fitted, obviously organic cotton tee. Billy is an island boy. He lives the life that most surfer boys dream of. His style emulates this to a point. You can tell he is the real deal. I also couldn’t help but notice his adornment of ethnic beaded bracelets and water inspired “man” jewelry. Some of his favorite brands are John Varvatos and Diesel, whom he loves to wear on tour and at home. Billy’s style is approachable and casually tough. Hanging out with him makes you want to don your own colorful board shorts, grab a board and hang ten.
Currington goes home as often as he can. And securing the Tybee house was the fruit of the patient determination he had cultivated as a struggling musician. “I had been reading The Secret,” Currington says of Rhonda Bryne’s best-selling self-help book. “Right after I read the book, I was renting a house on the beach part of Tybee, and I saw a magazine called South magazine sitting on the coffee table. I thumbed through it, and the section that caught my eye was the section where this very house was featured. I thought, ‘There’s the perfect place.’ But the price was too high.” But Currington is a man who believes in his dreams, and, bolstered by the ideas in the book he’d just read, he cut out the image of the Tybee beach house and hung it on his refrigerator, focusing his energy on knowing that one day that house would be his. “Eventually they took the Tybee house off the market. But I still couldn’t move on.” Currington hung that picture on every fridge at every house he lived in for the next several years until he was finally in a financial position to buy it. It’s not so much the house he’s in love with, Currington explains to his visitors, but the location and its amenities. The place has a
Billy performing live onstage.
dock, a small lobster boat, a swimming Currington enjoys a breathtaking view pool, along with an from his patio. observation deck he built himself. “You’ve got so much view here; you can see the ocean and all the back inlets from one side,” he says, wonder on his face. “From the other side you can see ships going in and out of the Savannah River. You have an amazing view from every angle of the house. It’s very peaceful living here.” Beautiful and beachy, the home is an honest reflection of its owner. It is not perfectly appointed and spotlessly stark. Rather, the house looks comfortably lived in and not the least bit ostentatious; one can tell there’s been some fun times at the Currington Estate. The day he invited South magazine out to his pad, Currington was wearing what he said is his typical getup – a pair of surfer shorts, a loose T-shirt, and a circle hook necklace he bought on his last trip to Maui. The surfer style complements the laidback personality, and the fact that he actually is an avid surfer. In fact, surfboard companies have flooded him with so many unsolicited boards he finally had to tell them, “No more.”
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