Pear pressure.
Every engagement ring on my newsfeed is a pear-shaped diamond.
Good morning everyone.
Today’s letter includes: the ring shape that has taken over my Instagram feed, Lorde’s workout routine, nobody asked for Bengal tigers at their hotel in Pennsylvania, Sierra Tishgart is leaving the cookware company she co-founded, and New York Magazine released their Hamptons issue.
Wearing an Amber Waves trucker hat in the driver’s seat of a Jeep Grand Wagoneer while double-parked outside Carissa’s is no longer a power move in the Hamptons. The hats are now being sold for about $10 on Depop, and even less on eBay. I saw one in a Beacon’s Closet in Manahttan over the winter. It’s time to sell your Amber Waves merch stock.
Because there’s a new hat in town.
Yesterday on the Bridgehampton LIRR platform, I counted 12 women wearing merch from the newly reopened Sagaponack General Store. Since relaunching in April, the General Store has become eden for beach people who like to spend $20 on salads and gossip with their neighbors. There are at least two and sometimes four flavors of frozen yogurt swirling at all times. There are delicately pre-wrapped beach sandwiches (baked on bread that had consulting from the Winner pastry team), and self-serve candy stored in old post office boxes (the store is attached to the neighborhood post office). Jones Road beauty products share shelf space with locally grown tomatoes and blueberries. The beer fridges have latched icebox doors the size of computer monitors.
(There’s also a new truck in town, but we can talk about INEOS drivers in another letter).
A cherry-on-top of my first visit to the store was seeing Blackstone’s COO Jon Gray drinking coffee outside with a pile of papers, printed and flipped with a black paperclip in classic banker form. They might’ve been crop reports — his wife, Mindy, owns the store — but they were more likely a model for a multifamily unit in Scottsdale.
Inside the store, I immediately clocked that about 25% of the floorspace was dedicated to merch. Hats, hoodies, t-shirts and totes spilling out of drawers and shelves. Drivers of baby blue Broncos are already wearing the merch when they get in line for coffee. Stressed out hungover couples waiting on line for egg sandwiches and cinnamon rolls, arguing about if they should get the burgundy or cream-colored hoodies.
“We put a lot of care and thought into the merch, so we’re really happy everyone loves it so much,” Gabby Green, GM of Sagaponack General Store, told me this morning when I asked her about the merch strategy. “My friend Abby’s Orient Linen Co. is behind the aprons and some of the totes and I love the work she does and I’m so thrilled she was able to be involved. Ed, the man behind the hats and crewnecks, has been making merch for the General Store going back decades, so those items are part of the history of the store. And the hoodie looks good on everyone and is the most comfortable hoodie I’ve ever worn so I’m not surprised that one is so popular. But the point is, we put as much thought into the merch as every aspect of the store, and nothing is better than seeing our clothes out in the wild.”
Please keep an eye out for these hats on the streets of the Upper East Side and the West Village this summer. We will be adding Hamptons merch — as well as media-figures-as-athletes and the next Skims store opening — to the Feed Me betting app I’m working on.
