Hampton Style - June 27, 2008 - Surf Culture 2008

Montauk's newest surfing hub isn't even on the beach,
but with a little help from Tracy Feith,
The Surf Lodge won't need to be.
As it happens, the surfers come to them.

by Kristina Ward
photographs by Francine Fleischer
Clothes by Tracy Feith. Hair and Makeup by Pam Geiger

"I'm really comfortable here," says fashion designer and avid surfer Tracy Feith of his recent collaboration with the owners of Surf Lodge, the 32-room hotel, bar and restaurant that just opened on Montauk's Fort Pond to much fanfair. Tracy's boutique is only 200 square feet of the attractive, sprawling venture, but the small space is brimming with the same flirty boho dresses that send celebrities and socialites into rhapsodic testimonials; people typically don't feel things about Tracy Feith in half-measures.

On a recent afternoon at the Surf Lodge, it is clear that this applies equally to his role as a local surf guru among Montauk's shiny, pretty crowd of transplanted New Yorkers and young surfers. Count in the hotel owners, too: stalwarts of the New York nightlife inner sanctum who have every reason to be jaded, but who, while they're here anyway, appear to be anything but. Rob McKinley, Jamie Mulholland, Jayma Cardosa, Steven Kamali and Summer Strauch devised this place, renovating a ramshackled inn and infusing it with fastidiously crafted surf culture-all the right locals, books, music and surfer films, the latter of which play in the sunken lounge area 24 hours a day. Summer and Rob live together in Montauk and they entreated Tracy and his longtime partner Susan Winget to move their Napeague dress shop into the hotel. (Tracy also has shops in Southampton, NoLita and Los Angeles). Soliciting Tracy was surely done with a mind to the designer's impressive acolytes and contact cool. It's proven to be a prescient move on their part; witnessing Tracy's recent late-afternoon arrival at the Surf Lodge was a unique study in hipster migration patterns.

Still salty and wearing boardshorts from a long day spent surfing at Ditch Plains, Feith is lumbering casually back and forth between his shop near the hotel's entry and the man-made sand pit that joins the 2600 square foot deck with the artfully planned bonfire pit in the back. As Tracy does so, a small (and growing) crowd of people is casually migrating with him. Some are curious fashionistas who recognize the enigmatic designer, others are staffers who have struck up a genial sporting camaraderie with him, but most telling is the behavior coming from a few of the world-weary owners. All New York posturing is dropped when they converse with Tracy. Since they are largely curators of the authentic, wresting it to their advantage in their beautiful scene-setting endeavors (Cain and Gold Bar are among their Manhattan-based clubs), this clique has the utmost appreciation for the surfer cred and unstudied élan that this shaggy fashion designer brings to their burgeoning surf hub.

There are those who might dismiss this glamorous, stylized fantasy incarnation of Montauk surf life - locals who prefer the Ditch Witch catering truck to $25 entrees but they dare not do so because of the many local stalwarts who have already joined the party. Jimmy Buffett likes the place; surf legend Tony C's artwork hangs prominently on the walls, and the handsome, dress-making "Surfing Jesus" is in residence all summer. "I get inspired when I spend time here," says Tracy. "I love that I can come over right from the beach and suddenly be in the middle of all this activity." The hotel's owners and staff all wear Feith's designs and invariably hotel guests ask about one outfit or another and they are summarily sent into Tracy's shop where they emerge wearing their new purchase and holding their former ensemble in a bag. "Rob and Summer really appreciated what we were all about," says Tracy, referring to their earliest encounters and adding that their two businesses' natural audiences cross-pollinate well in this new union. "I don't usually go out-not out here, not in the city. But there seems to be such a natural convergence of worlds here; it seems much more natural to be social in this place. The scene just sort of emerges as the sun goes down; people I know come for dinner and I'm still not changed from having been at the beach. A great band is playing and there are places to sit and look through old surfer books. I like to see the way people dress in my clothes; I like being able to talk to them about it."

If the place he's describing, Surf Lodge, is potentially a catalyst for replacing the dingy authentic Montauk surf vibe with an expensive artifice-laden incarnation of it, Tracy himself still represents the real thing. He really does need to surf a few times every week to be happy. "It's the one thing I do that allows me to deal with the rest of it. I seek out solitude when I surf." People who work near him in the city joke about seeing him walking through Manhattan's trendy meatpacking district carrying his board under his arm, leaving the showroom and headed for the LIRR whenever the wave reports suddenly turn positive. He's out of the office and off to seek a little clarity. Tracy takes the same approach when designing his clothes and finding his way in the prickly fashion industry. "Vogue was just out here in Montauk shooting a story on me this week; I think it's about the bohemian designers. I guess that's me, but I never set out to be something so easily labeled. I just gravitate toward a certain lifestyle and aesthetic and those influences show up in my clothes."

Tracy charts a history that began in Texas but quickly sidestepped to the skater/surfer culture of southern California the day he left high school. "At the time I wasn't yet a designer, I was just a guy who loved motorcycles and skateboards and surfing and music. Punk settled into L.A. by the late 70s and it changed the sport and that whole lifestyle really amped things up. I think that was the moment when I realized that clothes could convey things about people without speaking." These tribal signs of the thrasher /"DogTown" youth scene quickly found their way into the clothes Tracy would begin designing. While these are visually a far stretch from the sophisticated, earthy dresses he now sells to an impossibly famous and fashionable cadre of devotees, these early incarnations still hearken to the same zeitgeist for which Tracy appears to be an ideal lightning rod. Soaking up the music, sports and cultural cues around him, he creates clothes that are a natural extension of it all.

Because Tracy loves surfing and Montauk, his clothes can't help but be perfectly crafted wardrobes for those who feel likewise. Because his patrons and fans recognize the oracle in him, they naturally just want to hang around him. All of this is good for business at the Surf Lodge and on prominent display if you're among the lucky ones able to secure a room or dinner reservation. The drinks aren't cheap, but neither is the view from the deck. And as beautiful as the pond, stretching out before the hotel's generously proportioned deck, the view in the other direction-back into the hotel's effervescent lobby, with Tracy holding court next to his ethereal beauty of a partner, Susan, and their sprightly eight-year-old son Boomer it appears this is what the Surf Lodge owners are counting on as an equally compelling draw.