Is the Hamptons Becoming Palm Beach?

Aerin Lauder (center) speaks to Alina Cho (left) and her mother, Kim Cho.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine

It’s the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, and a set of well-bred, well-kept society types has descended on the Hedges Inn. The historic hotel in East Hampton has just reopened under new ownership with a restaurant called Swifty’s, after the former Upper East Side socialites’ haunt. In one corner of the room, Ina Garten sips a martini and giggles with her husband, Jeffrey, and the director Rob Marshall. At the bar, the makeup artist Bobbi Brown chats with New York Fashion Week’s Fern Mallis. Everyone here has an important last name or an important relative (Naomi Watts’s brother, for instance) or a vaguely important job. “She has started some big companies, but I don’t know what they are,” says one Hamptons housewife, sipping a flute of Champagne and gesturing toward a guest on the other side of the patio. Nearby, someone’s toddler doodles with a crayon in between bites of caviar. “This is such a great start to the summer,” everyone keeps saying. Through the window, hydrangeas sway in the wind.

Swifty’s is one of the buzziest openings out East this year. After much drama last season, Hamptonites seem to be issuing a deep sigh of relief: The establishment is (ostensibly) under their control once again. Last summer, the space was Sartiano’s, an Italian restaurant opened by Scott Sartiano, the man behind the much-talked-about Manhattan private members’ club Zero Bond. After one season, he was forcefully rejected by the community, which moaned to the press (and the local police) that the tranquil pondside inn was becoming a celebrity- and influencer-infested late-night party spot just like his club in the city. Though that never really came to pass, Sartiano couldn’t save his vision; as the East Hampton mayor, Jerry Larsen, told The Wall Street Journal, “I don’t trust this guy.” After the season, the lease was not renewed; the hotel was bought by Sarah Wetenhall, the hotelier behind the ritzy Colony in Palm Beach. Tonight is sort of her debutante ball as she reintroduces herself and her revamped and more quietly luxurious Hedges to the Hamptons. As one guest tells her at the bar, everybody is already clamoring for reservations. “From your lipstick to God’s ears,” Wetenhall coos back.

Sartiano — known for his chumminess with Eric Adams — wasn’t welcome here, but the residents are taking quite nicely to Wetenhall, whose flamingo-pink Palm Beach hotel is smack-dab in the middle of what is now basically Trumplandia. She’s nothing like her swaggering predecessor. She’s a prim, polite mother of three who flutters around the room in a Dolce & Gabbana dress dotted with red roses. “I knew you’d be wearing flowers,” a guest remarks when they arrive. “It’s like a disease!” she responds. “People always ask me, ‘Do you ship your Palm Beach clothes to the Hamptons for the summer?,’” Wetenhall told me when I met her in the hotel’s library shortly before dinner. “I don’t. They’re actually very different” — though she has noticed there’s a lot of “synergy” between Palm Beach and the East End these days. They’re both “affluent beach communities” with “complementary seasons,” meaning “you can slide right from one to the other with a brief pit stop in New York for a month or so.” The same people who summer in the Hamptons winter in Palm Beach, especially now: Even some of the New Yorkers who moved to Florida during the pandemic (for political reasons or otherwise) kept their summer homes here. And hers is not the only Palm Beach hot spot out East this summer. Coniglio, a Palm Beach fashion brand, is opening soon; another, Love Binetti, is in Sag Harbor. Mary Lou’s, a cocktail lounge just a mile from Mar-a-Lago, beloved by the likes of Don Jr., Michael Jordan, and Ramona Singer (another New Yorker and one of several Real Housewives of New York City who have fled the city for South Florida), is opening in Montauk. (Unlike the Hedges, Mary Lou’s leans into a flashier, Palm Beachier aesthetic: cheetah print, red velvet, a disco ball shaped like a shark, bottle service, DJs, and omakase nights. As one of the owners put it to me when I took a tour in May, it’s meant to feel like a “beach club in the golden era of the ’70s.” It’s for “pretty people” and, the owners insist, “local fishermen.”)

At Swifty’s, I pair off with two Amagansett-by-way-of-Tribeca moms. One, with fresh highlights and a neck full of jewels, is a famous actor’s wife. The other, beautiful in an au naturel, Pam Anderson sort of way, is a famous designer’s sister. “This is an essential group,” says the Actor’s Wife, gesturing around the room, a Casa Dragones on the rocks (“the new Mommy’s little helper”) in hand. “You just stepped into the most … the most … This is everything. This is the essential oil of the flower,” she effuses. They know everyone here. A powerful Hollywood agent stops by our table to detail and lightly complain about his packed summer schedule: the Superman premiere, a wedding in Spain, a stop in Venice, Emma Watson’s party in London. “Champagne problems,” the Actor’s Wife reminds him.

Hannah Bronfman and Joseph Altuzarra.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine

Marci Klein and Don Lemon.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine

No one here tells me they went to Sartiano’s last summer. “It attracted, well, not this crowd. It attracted a sort of bro-y crowd,” the Actor’s Wife tells me. “The Hamptons is such an extension of New York City. It’s all finance bros and influencers. This room,” in comparison, “feels like old-school celebrity New York.” It’s hard for all of us not to ogle Ina. “I can’t even look in her direction. I’m so starstruck,” she says. Garten, a few tables over, is screaming “hello” to Peggy Siegal, the Hollywood publicist who was brought down by her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein: “Peggy! How are you? I haven’t seen you in forever!” Soon after, Don Lemon shows up in all cream. I ask my tablemates if it’s easier for the so-called canceled to fly under the radar here. “There is no woke culture in the Hamptons,” one plainly informs me. (After all, it’s where many disgraced men, among them Chris Cuomo, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer, decamped after being chased out of the city.) Later, they’ll explain, when I bring up Lemon’s outfit, “There’s a lot of summer cream here.” For hours, the moms assess the room, table by table, the good plastic surgery and the bad. They also get worked up about Meghan Markle and Lauren Sánchez. “Every woman on that space trip is awful,” says the Designer’s Sister. Since they seem to be somewhat familiar with Sánchez, I ask what her deal is. “I think you know what it is,” they tell me.

Another recent unwelcome Hamptons guest this season, at least in spirit, is Donald Trump. Last summer, the two women were horrified when a flotilla of MAGA boats showed up in the harbor (but, the Actor’s Wife reminds the Designer’s Sister, “those were blue-collar Trumpers,” not necessarily the kind of groveling one-percenters we’re talking about). “I know a lot of people in this room. I don’t think they’re Trump supporters,” says the Designer’s Sister. “I daresay this room is pretty Trumpy,” counters the Actor’s Wife.

Eventually, we’re the last three left. Much to the probable pleasure of the neighbors, it’s barely ten o’clock. Many nights this summer, very likely, will look much like this one. In fact, the next evening, I’ll watch a bald man in a BMW, dressed in all cream, yell at the valets after being turned away for not having a reservation. The season has just begun. It’s 95 degrees in Palm Beach but just perfect in the Hamptons.

Outside the restaurant 75 Main in Southampton at 3 p.m. on a Saturday.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine

Downtown Southampton on a Saturday in May.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine