Dans Papers - June 8, 2007 - The Hamptons Club Scene Steps Up A Notch

It's Memorial Day weekend, 2007. You're standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the most cosmetically-enhanced and scantily-clad members of the Long Island Long Leg Convention, pushing and shoving their bodies up against the velvet rope, shouting out a name, tossing around a few thousand dollars and hoping to get to where a DJ is spinning the hottest beats of the summer for all the beautiful people to dance to. Once inside, you see faces from every fashion magazine, hear some of your favorite artists sing along, karaoke-style, to their big single and clink glasses with some of the most powerful people in every industry. And if you're at Stereo by the Shore, Dune or any of this year's other hot spots, when you exit the club you will be greeted by angry stiletto-wearers who just didn't make the cut and are now seething at the back door.

If this doesn't sound like the Hamptons club scene from the long gone days of Jet East and Conscience Point, think again. This year's club scene will be bigger and better than any others before it, as some of New York City's most illustrious clubs have moved out to the Hamptons for the season. As one reveler exclaimed, "It's like being able to go out in The City and then wake up at the beach!" If you love the nightlife, the Hamptons are the place to be.

So why is all this happening now? It's not as if the Hamptons just became a hot spot to party. After all, most of these clubs have moved in to remodeled versions of clubs that came before them. Flirt Lounge and Bistro replaced Resort. Stereo by the Shore, the Hamptons incarnation of Stereo, replaced Tavern. Pink Elephant replaced Cabana. WhiteHouse replaced C.P.I. Dune, the beach outpost of Marquee, replaced the Hamptons outpost of their New York City neighbor, Cane, which had replaced Jet East the year before. Sean Gallagher, hairstylist to the stars -- Giselle Bundchen, Petra Nemcova, Adriana Lima, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, just to name a few -- and one of New York City's top club promoters explained why New York City clubs have taken over the East End this year. "To really exist [as a successful club,]" he said, "you need to be more than a nightclub." A club needs to be a brand. And to succeed as a brand, it needs to promote its name, its logo, its style -- and follow its customers. "When there are events around the country, [the clubs] try to get their brand out there. Marquee throws parties at Sundance, Pink Elephant is opening up in Chicago, and a lot of clubs want to be in Vegas." And every one of them wants to be in the Hamptons.

Each club has a team of marketing and PR representatives behind them, as well as sponsors who provide the funding clubs need to send their top people all over the country to sell the brand and ensure that no matter which incarnation of the club you visit, you will have a similar experience. These sponsors are usually luxury alcohol companies like Hennessey and Level vodka, but they can be as seemingly unrelated to the nightlife as car companies such as Cadillac -- which is the reason every club parking lot in the Hamptons is crawling with Escalades. This symbiotic relationship fortifies the club's brand by allowing them to branch out across the country and fortifies the sponsor's brand in New York City, a notoriously hard city to win over with traditional advertising methods.

The promoters are an instrumental part of this courtship between customer and brand. It is their job to ensure that the people who are spending thousands of dollars to sit at a table in these clubs get the experience they are paying for. The clubs usually provide their best promoters with summer houses -- which the promoters then fill with models and their beautiful friends -- and vans or SUVs with drivers, to ensure that the beautiful people get to the club every night unharmed. Most promoters, therefore, have jobs that enable them to make connections to beautiful people wherever they go. Gallagher explained that, when he works on a photo shoot or styles hair for fashion shows in Bryant Park, "it does nothing but strengthen the brand." In return, these beautiful people get to party as much as they want, anywhere they want, usually free of charge. "My clients from the salon will text me when they're coming out." When he responds, Sean tells them where the parties are. Other people Sean works with at Hamptons clubs are fashion designers, film producers and screenwriters, who all provide the club with access to Hollywood's brightest stars.

Of course, the success of the Hamptons club outposts is not solely based on the prowess of the promoters. Both Sean Gallagher and Hamptons celebrity DJ Joel Rodney (a.k.a. DJ Biggie) commented that the appeal of the beach and the unseasonably beautiful weather over Memorial Day weekend got the clubbing season off to a wildly successful start. No one at any of the clubs was prepared for the surge of bodies that would be pushing against the ropes in front of every club from Friday night until early Tuesday morning that weekend. At Stereo by the Shore, the club had reached capacity by 11:30 p.m. -- at most clubs in New York City, the door usually gets busy around one a.m. Throngs of people stood outside for hours, begging and bribing to get in, with little success. At Neptune's in Hampton Bays, Joel remembers, "people stood on line for four hours just to get in, waited for two hours to get a drink at the bar and no one complained. One guy offered me one thousand dollars to let him in the back door." Bribing never works, but this episode was a telltale sign that, if you like to go out, "it's gonna be a real good summer." That was no small statement coming from Rodney, who has spun private parties for P. Diddy and worked at Marquee and other New York City nightclubs for years. When asked which new Hamptons clubs would be really hot this summer, he replied "WhiteHouse. Everyone who goes there has a great time." But what about last year's star, Pink Elephant? "Pink Elephant is more of a lounge," Joel explained. "People go there to have a drink and relax before they go somewhere else. I think that's what they're trying to do and it's been working really well for them."

Last year's staples will still be able to coexist with the new glitterati magnets. But who will win this year's popularity contest? This summer, according to Sean Gallagher, it's not about one club attracting the most attention. "The clubs aren't out here to make a killing financially," he explained. "They're here to strengthen the brand." Stereo by the Shore is here to keep Stereo on everyone's mind, Dune is here marketing for Marquee and Pink Elephant is here spreading the word for Pink Elephant in New York and Chicago. The clubbing web is expanding and the Hamptons are caught right in the middle of it. And what a dazzling, intoxicating web it is.