Every year I hear the same yarn: the Hamptons are over. But it’s always from those folks who don’t come out here. Sure, I’ve got my complaints about the crowded roads and the crazy farm-stand prices, but the world summer mecca on Long Island’s east end continuously brings forth the the most fabulous, sometimes the most odd, and certainly never boring entertaining ideas.
Here’s a few postcards from the second half of my summer. See you in the fall!
The museum plastered the walls with graffiti-style gobo projections, which contrasted with the pretty green country flower centerpieces (by Ron Wendt Design) that were mounted in rows on custom, silvery-looking wood racks.
Regular readers will know that I am a big summer tent complainer—they are always hot and airless. Yet still, when I heard that Southampton Hospital’s annual event, which was chaired by Jean Shafiroff again (for the third time in a row) and managed to outdo last year’s haul with more than $1.7 million, was moving to the giant air-conditioned frame tent where Art Southampton had a giant expo the week before, I wondered, would it feel like we were at a trade show? This is, after all, the most white shoe of events.
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Within seconds of arriving the answer was clear, this was cool. In every sense of the word. This is how the dining room looked when guests first came buzzing in from cocktails, where Robbins Wolfe’s signature bar snacks of crudite and cheese straws kept guests from complaining.
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But once the doors to this beautiful room were finally opened, it was like kids racing into a playground. It was spacious and beautiful, and for gents like me at our one coat-and-tie night of the season, it was gloriously cool.
To play off the height of the giant new (air-conditioned! Yahoo! See the vents in the upper left corner!) tent, Southampton Hospital created towers of candles. Very chic. But being clumsy, I always steer clear of things like this...
Later, while the air stayed cool, the scene turned hot, and the dance floor took off. The cool air and the roomy vibe really got people off their feet and onto the floor.
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It didn’t hurt that Alex Donner’s orchestra was blowing hard and hot all night. Alex is celebrating his 25th year in the business, and still going strong. He has it in his blood of course; as a youngster, his dad was a regular at the Stork Club.
Avenue magazine’s editor Daisy Prince and president Randi Schatz have the perfect solution to creating the idyllic outdoor party setting. Rather than try and recreate one, they just went to the masters, in this case Mecox Gardens. Its indoor-outdoor emporium of furniture, fountains, objets, you name it, is the word iydllic come to life.
I don’t know if this beautiful curved raw wood table (note the knotty end) is allowed to sit outside. I guess if you are wealthy enough everything can go outside, but this is just one of dozens of beautiful vignettes tucked away in this Hamptons landmark.
Also ditching the tents this year was Parrish Art Museum. Since it moved from its Grosvenor Atterbury Beaux Arts-style mansion on Job’s Lane to the ultra-modern Herzog & de Meuron palace in Water Mill, the museum’s barnlike entryways served as a runway of sorts at the event.
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Super-long tables ran the lengths of the outdoor corridors, giving diners the sense they were floating above the former potato fields that surrounded them.
When it comes to combining the sublime and the ridiculous, nothing compares to the Watermill Center’s annual summer gala. This year, for its 20th anniversary, the event was entitled “Devil’s Heaven” and guests tiptoed through a bloody S&M scene featuring a tortured angel and a very handsome devil, rubbing his bloody gloved hands.
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Here, an Evangelia Ranto takes waterskiing and decorating and combines them in what looked like nice wholesome dangerous fun. This art performance is called "Solo with Chairs From Medea (2)" and is originally by Dimitris Papaioannou, created in 2008.
Gigi New York (disclosure: I work with them!) has supported the Watermill Center with gift bag donations for a number of years. This year to celebrate the opening of our Southampton flagship store, we created these “L’enfer” paperweights. The Sartre quote is from the end of his existential drama Huis Clos, which translated means, roughly, closed door. In the play the characters, who don’t know each other and can’t figure out why they are in a room together, slowly realize they are in hell. “L’enfer c’est les autres!”—“Hell is other people!”—is the main character’s anguished cry of realization. Indeed.
The bittersweet end of summer for me is always the Grand Prix of the Hampton Classic, taking place this year on Sunday, September 1. Inside the tent, socialites (that’s Kathy and Rick Hilton in the foreground) mix with Mayor and Georgina Bloomberg, and every farm decorates its tables with bric-a-brac from their summer homes. It’s festive, but forlorn, a Gatsby-ish goodbye to summer and all that.
