SMOKING-HOT SCENE MAKERS

THE HAMPTONS’ Peter Davis SMOKING-HOT SCENE MAKERS

It was truly a summer of the best of the best! Here’s who made a splash on the East End this year. BY PETER DAVIS

Cynthia Rowley, Kit Keenan

Where to begin! One of the hautest Hamptons soirées happened when Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin took over a private estate in Bridgehampton to throw a weekend of events to celebrate its new Anatomy of Beauty campaign. Surf Lodge’s Jayma Cardoso hosted a fourcourse dinner on Friday night and the Hamps hipsters were out in full force. “The evening was so well produced,” Cardoso says. “I just walked in and greeted my guests. What a change for me as I’m used to always doing everything at a party myself.” Liev Schreiber, dapper in a navy blue suit, used a magnifying glass to examine VC’s new luxury timepieces. After a seated dinner, fashion favorite Caroline Vreeland and musical duo Acute Inflections performed for the crowd. We spotted: Sasha and Oli Benz, SNL’s Heidi Gardner, designer Waris Ahluwalia, nightlife guru Tommy Saleh, model Sailor Brinkley-Cook, Hamptonite Jack Brinkley-Cook, and writer Elise Taylor, to name a few.

An artist getting attention

Caroline Vreeland Liev Schreiber

Linjie Deng exhibition at Hamptons Fine Art Fair

Jake Sosne, Sailor Brinkley-Cook, Jayma Cardoso, Jack Brinkley-Cook

Out East is Linjie Deng, whose show “Double Sided” was the buzz at the third-annual Hamptons Fine Art Fair. At 30, Deng, who was born in China and studied traditional Chinese calligraphy at age 6, was the youngest and only Asian artist to be featured at the fair.

After getting an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, Deng rented a studio in Manhattan and hasn’t stopped working. “Art saved my life,” he confesses. “If I didn’t have art, I wouldn’t know how to express myself.” His new paintings combine traditional ceramic vase drawings with modern Western fashion branding, like Versace and Balenciaga. “While the world has come to rely on Chinese products, Western fashion goods have become hot commodities in China. I wanted to build on that.”

Speaking of star scene makers, Surf Lodge’s longtime doorman Jonny Lennon is quite the busy guy this summer. A main partner in Soho hot spot Goldbar, Lennon is opening the second Goldbar in Chicago’s trendy Fulton Market by New Year’s, and he just launched his own high-end cannabis brand called Lennon’s Reserve, in California. “Lennon’s Reserve came out of my quest to find amazing marijuana,” he explains. Think of it as the Supreme of cannabis with timed drops and small batches that sell out fast. “I’ve been sourcing weed all over the country, from Florida to Colorado to California, which is the best,” Lennon continues. “The surfers in Santa Cruz live for the plant. I believe this is going to be the biggest industry in the country, and my brand is going to be on top.”

When not sourcing and smoking cannabis (“I could live out in the Hamptons and just grow pot,” he says. “I’d be so happy.”), Lennon is Surf Lodge’s gatekeeper, which is no easy task. “Before I go to work, I swim and meditate,” he tells Spotlight. “When you have 600 people staring at you, you have no choice but to giggle and stay calm. It’s challenging, but I’ve been at Surf Lodge for 15 years. I’m used to it.” After he works the door, Lennon avoids the busy streets of trendy Montauk. “I do my job as nicely as possible. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to run into 550 people who I told they couldn’t come in. I don’t want to walk around Montauk. I go straight home.” T

ELSA SOYARS