There’s a lot of beige in the Hamptons.
I don’t understand it. Does being rich really mean a life devoid of color?
People spend three million dollars (bargain!) on a bungalow and 60K a year on property taxes and all of them buy the same beige pool furniture. When we pass the pool furniture store, there isn’t a cheerful striped umbrella in sight.
I develop a similar theory about beach coverups. You know, the things women wear over their swimsuits that are half shirt, half dress.
The people who rent houses are in colorful ones. The old timers who own their houses have on white linen. If you can’t spot them by their linen, look into their eyes. If they look at you like you don’t belong here, you’ve found one.
They’re also sort of washed out themselves. Their hair and skin are beige, like their furniture and insufferable chenille throw blankets.
I spot the first supermodel in Bridgehampton, as we crawl up 27.
She’s talking to someone at a table on the sidewalk. Her glossy, honey-colored hair hangs to her waist like she just had it blown out; but she didn’t. She woke up like that.
She’s wearing low rise olive-green khakis and a sleeveless, soft cotton shirt. Leather belt and sandals, sunglasses. Handbag that cost five thousand dollars.
That’s the difference between Hamptons casual and the rest of us. I’m currently wearing a black t-shirt that’s stretched out and faded, and a shapeless white cotton skirt that’s a hand me down from a friend. It used to have a design on it but faded away after hundreds of washes.
These are my good casual clothes because we’re visiting people. In the Hamptons. Everything the supermodel is wearing looks like this season, not last. Her trousers are probably Prada.
This is a wild supposition. I have no idea what Prada’s resort wear collection looks like this year.
Secret Service spots the supermodels coming out of Pilates class when we get to East Hampton. Suddenly there are more than a dozen impossibly thin women in sunglasses and expensive workout clothes on the sidewalk. They carry their key fobs to Jaguars, Mini Coopers, and Porsche Cayennes.
The names of the stores we pass: Lululemon, Prada, Manolo Blahnik, Louis Vuitton; not one but two Ralph Laurens. There isn’t a Walmart or Target in sight.
My favorite East Hampton store used to be Cashmere Hamptons. It’s gone now. I googled it and can’t find it. This vexes me.
There is a Cashmere Emporium in Southampton, but that’s not it. I’ll have to ask our hostess if she remembers it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.
We used to go to the Hamptons quite a bit. My husband’s late aunt, the most generous person on earth, invited us to her Architectural Digest-worthy house all the time. She never seemed to have less than 18 people for dinner.
The Hamptons are the land of the beautiful—beautiful rich people.
We are here once again for the first time in many years. Ever since she died, we don’t come out.
But we have good friends who have a house in the Springs, which is East Hampton-ish. East Hampton-adjacent. I think.
The geography of the most exclusive part of the Eastern seaboard has always confused me.
We leave Yonkers (definitely not Hamptons-adjacent or Hamptons anything else) on Saturday morning, hoping to avoid traffic, and succeed. Aren’t we smart?
Then we hit 27. If we’d wanted to avoid traffic on 27, we would have had to leave at 4 am, not 7:00.
If you’ve never been to the Hamptons, Route 27 is The Road. It runs east west and goes to Brooklyn under the aptly named Sunrise Highway.
It’s how you get to Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton. It’s also a divider between the fancy houses and the super fancy houses. If you live on the right side of 27, you live on the ocean side. If you live on the other, you must cross 27 to get there.
One of several very silly status symbols out here:
“What side of 27 are you on?”
In the Hamptons, Route 27 is perpetually jammed with traffic. I texted our hosts to see if they need anything before we got to King Kullen in Bridgehampton. They’re happy we did because they need half and half. Traveling out to get anything is a nightmare on weekends, and it’s Labor Day.
I start to wonder about the supermodel I spotted, and it expands to all the supermodels at brunch this Saturday out here. Certainly, there’s more than one supermodel at brunch today.
What do they eat?
They probably eat avocado toast. But maybe they add an egg. Is that too much food for a supermodel?
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe they order buttermilk pancakes and bacon. Maybe they only have a few bites, then get too full.
Maybe they clean their plates.
Maybe they eat brunch, and dinner, and that’s it for the day. I know for a fact supermodels can’t snack. There’s no way they’re sitting in front of a TV with a bag of Doritos and a coke.
But I can’t know this, even though I think I do. Maybe supermodels have a normal diet.
I start imagining a normal diet for a supermodel.
Wake up: Green tea
Breakfast: collagen shake
(Attend Supermodel Yoga and eat nothing till noon)
Brunch: one slice of avocado toast and a soft-boiled egg. Leave a couple of bites on plate.
Rare afternoon snack: a few carrot sticks and two teaspoons of hummus, murmurs of “so yummy” are heard.
Dinner at 9 pm: Steamed mussels and broccoli rabe (costs around $200 at one of these restaurants.) Indulge in a glass of Cakebread Chardonnay.
Tell everyone what a great time they had Saturday; they ate so much.
Yes, this must be the eating schedule of a supermodel in the Hamptons. Now I have to add up how many calories she had:
90 + 64 + 100 + 25 + 80 + 25 +300 + 150 + 50 + 120 = 1,004 calories.
Hmm. That’s probably not enough calories to sustain even an emaciated supermodel. I look it up and discover that supermodels need at least 1300 calories.
So maybe she has a bit of pasta with the mussels at dinner. That’ll do it. I’m not too far off.
When I was an actress in my early thirties, a friend passed along my headshot to a commercial agent at William Morris. The agent liked what he saw and invited me in for a meeting. When I got there, one of the first things he said was,
“Well, you’re no supermodel, but I think I can get you some work.”
Did I ever say I was a supermodel, sir? No, I did not.
I modeled when I was eighteen, for about five minutes, but he didn’t know that. Why did he need to tell me I wasn’t a supermodel?
Because I’m so fat, I thought. I was a size eight.
I know I’m no supermodel. I require more calories to keep me alive.
I didn’t realize it when it happened, but he threw down a gauntlet. I picked it up and ran. It’s the I’m a failure because I’m no supermodel gauntlet.
I’ve been at war with myself ever since.
I’m going to be fifty-nine years old next week, and I’m still fretting about not being a supermodel. Like it should have been my sole goal in life.
Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. Does it ever stop? I see one supermodel at brunch, and there goes my hostile brain. I have failed at life because I’m not a twenty-year-old supermodel. The end.
This is the story of my life. I am constantly distracted by shiny objects, even though I know plenty of people with a ton of shiny objects who are abjectly unhappy. I never learn.
I don’t even think about the Hamptons anymore. I miss our aunt and uncle a great deal, but I don’t pine for the Hamptons.
But as soon as I start to see the ubiquitous privet hedges, I begin not only the supermodel drivel, but also start to tell myself what I should have.
I should have a house in the Hamptons, I think, on the ocean side of 27. But close to the ocean. I should be able to walk to the beach.
You can’t build on the beach, at least not in East Hampton, because they’re fierce protectors of the dunes out here. Which is wonderful.
But here’s a story about a guy who spent $57 million on his beach-adjacent house and was denied a permit for a walkway. They’re serious, and do not care how much money you have. You’re not screwing up the dunes.
This means walks on the beach are really nice—if you can get there. Forget parking. You can’t park out here without a town sticker. They’ll give you a ticket between $150-$250 for parking your car in the beach lots.
Here’s a photo I took when we were walking. Does this look like a beach on Labor Day anywhere else in America?
As we were walking on the beach, I told Secret Service all the government has to do is tax rich fuckers like these in the Hamptons a little more, and we could all have health insurance. I mean really, they’d still get to walk on their pristine beaches. Is it too much to ask?
I think not.
While fantasizing about the life I should have, I decided I also need a helicopter. Because I cannot possibly sit through at least three hours of traffic every time I come out.
In addition to being a supermodel with my own helicopter and oceanside second home, I now need better clothes, better hair, and a body that can subsist on 1300 calories a day. While I’m at it, I need to look like I’m thirty, not nearly fiftysixty, so I need some work done on my face and regular Botox injections.
People, it’s bad enough to read about celebrities. Seeing the beautiful people in person is ruinous. Don’t drive into their habitat.
What is it about their allure? I don’t get it because it’s in direct contrast to one of my favorite hobbies: reading about the weddings featured in Vogue magazine. They are hilarious.
It’s great, you’ve got to try it. Nothing will make you laugh harder.
The first I read was the wedding of Ivy Getty. Her name caught my eye, and I started reading. I howled laughing. It was as if Vogue Magazine had merged with The Onion.
But it wasn’t just Ivy Getty (who has since filed for divorce.) They’re all hilarious. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these parties, then say things like,
“It had a really homey feeling.”
I have an uncomfortable relationship to wealth. That much is clear.
I check with my hosts about Hamptons Cashmere. Both my husband and they have a vague recollection of it. But as my hosts say, Lululemon is now their budget side of retail.
I tell them what I’m writing. My hostess starts laughing, telling me she’s afraid to ask what I’m imagining about the supermodels.
“Well, like what they eat in a day,” I reply.
“I can help with that,” she says.
Her husband and she are restauranters. They have a friend who had a restaurant out here which got really hot, all from influencers on the internet.
I always forget about influencers. It wasn’t a profession when I grew up.
Their friend’s menu boasted a pancake—that’s a single pancake—for the price of $15.
A common occurrence was for people to come out to the restaurant, order the $15 pancake, and then eat one bite or pretend they were about to bite. They’d snap a picture for Instagram, then abandon the pancakes entirely.
So perhaps I’m not wrong about supermodels at brunch. Perhaps they do not eat like the rest of us. Perhaps influencers and models eat only for show.
I’m dying to find out what they really eat. But I’ll never know for sure. As the agent at William Morris said, I’m no supermodel.
But guess what? Here’s the plot twist.
I may not be a supermodel at brunch, but I am a writer. And it is shocking how much work I got done this weekend. There was something glorious about just being in a different house, one that didn’t belong to me.
There was no laundry to fold, no dust to Swifter away, no pile of bills to go through. With no distractions, I worked the entirety of three days.
I read through my entire book. For the first time in five years the book is no longer an idea. It’s there.
I can barely believe it, but I like the book I wrote.
That’s worth more than being twenty years old at brunch, worth more than a helicopter and an ocean view.
Take that, beautiful people. I like what I have.
I can’t wait to read your book!
Just love this!