Like almost everyone else, Super Saturday designer/donor Carmen Marc Valvo laments the summer of 2009’s weird weather. Over brunch served at his elaborately landscaped Bridgehampton home, he mourned, “The roses didn’t even bother to bloom.”
I nodded. But secretly I had been thanking the gods for the lack of heat this summer. (Is global warming over? Are the icebergs getting bigger?)
You see, I am what In Style associate publisher Ron Prince called “a schvitzer.” That’s Yiddish for a person who sweats in excess. I was standing inside at Super Saturday 12, praising the forced cool air, when an event worker assured me apocryphally, “We’ve always had air conditioned tents.”
I knew this to be wrong because I went to the very first Super Saturday and the following five after it, and being a schvitzer, I would have remembered the presence of air conditioning.
Super Saturday began in now-deceased Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis’s East Hampton backyard, in what I always called “the woods.” Her house faced over the Peconic Bay to the north shore, and there were about 12 folding tables and a few clothes racks. Liz, already in post-chemo short hair, drank champers, told bawdy jokes, and shamed you into buying something nice for your mother.
The event then moved for two seasons to the home of model Basia, thanks to Next Model Management president Faith Kates Kogan, who is still the president of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Faith used to make all the gift bags in her garage. The event finally ended up at Nova’s Ark eight years ago. By way of disclosure, by then I had helped my client In Style become the title sponsor.
Fast forward a half decade and, boy, this has become a big event. The event yields 1,500 paying guests, more than 200 participating designers, and a panoply of tents that looks like Ringling Bros. Amid all this, the kids area immediately attracted me. In addition to carnival rides, inflatable castles, and the ubiquitous face painting, they had a boy-cave gaming tent which was dark, cool, and cacophonous with military explosions and car thefts. Fun!
Keeping the kids happy is very clever. It allows mom guilt-free discount shopping, and that is what this event is about. Despite the recession, Super Saturday 12 unloaded $3.4 million worth of steeply discounted garments, down only slightly from last year. And this time the prices were much cheaper, based on an unscientific survey of shoppers.
This event is run by Mark Addison of EventStyle. and it has grown gracefully. While both buffet tents sported long lines, the Sant Ambroeus grub was worth it: meaty lamb chops, silky seafood, and all sorts of chic salads and pastas. There were cashier stations everywhere, eliminating tedious checkout procedures of years past. My only beef was with the parking, which was time-consuming and ridiculously far from the sale itself. Time to invest in some golf carts.
Some celebs like Kelly Ripa and Mariska Hargitay show up every year. This year’s new crop included Blake Lively and Dina Lohan (who I overheard blabbing “We can do better pictures over at Polo”).
Sponsors get their own mini pavilions, depending on the size of their donation. Online discounter Rue La La offered Nantucket getaways for 40 percent off. At In Style’s canopy, My Spa 2 Go offered manicures and facial sprays (you can hire them for your event if you like that kind of thing: [email protected]). The biggest draw was Nintendo’s online poker training, where women could learn to bet the farm and lose their shirts at gambling just like men. Ah, progress.
This is really a women’s event, and although there are some guy’s clothes and stuff for sale—John Bartlett for Liz Claiborne was a standout—it is the women and their insatiable need to shop that I suspect will continue to fuel this juggernaut for years to come.
The invitation to Southampton Hospital’s 51st annual Summer Party featured a painting depicting acceptable summer party garb from the time of the hospital’s founding in 1909 and encouraged guests to follow the lead. So a sort of sartorial “tale of two cities” took place in Southampton, with Super Saturday on one end and this event on the other.
Again, unseasonably cool weather allowed period-dressed ladies to wear layers and layers of white, while the male peacocks went for straw boaters. As if that wasn’t show enough, the event also pre-announced on the invitation and in the program the names of committee members and the fashion houses they wore, which I’m reprinting here for fear that no one will believe me.
Debbie Bancroft, who squired New York's first lady, Michelle Paterson, wore Vera Wang; Somers Farkas went in Dior; and Tory Burch chose (surprise!) Tory Burch. I assumed this pronounced display was linked to some sort of donation from the fashion houses’ names, but that, I was sad to learn, was not the case.
Decor, a huge improvement over last year’s, was also centennial style, with fashion designer Steven Stolman and Tony Urrutia hoisting hydrangea in wire baskets high above blue-and-white striped cotton. Nothing beats blue and white in summer, I think.
The catering was, as before, by Robbins Wolfe, whose proprietor, Christopher Robbins, last year took issue with my observation that the champagne cocktails weren’t full enough. Now I really regret it, because this year they didn’t even serve them, nor any passed drinks or hors d’oeuvres during the cocktail hour. The bars had nuts (like at every summer party, they were sticky and gross) and crudités (with perfectly blanched carrots and asparagus and tasty dips). I assume this was a cost-cutting measure; a committee lady told me ticket sales had been good. But for the regular paying guest, I suspect the austerity went a bit too far.
