{"id":38958,"date":"2021-10-27T15:10:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T15:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=38958"},"modified":"2021-10-27T15:36:57","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T15:36:57","slug":"fifteen-minutes-in-montauk","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/fifteen-minutes-in-montauk\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifteen Minutes In Montauk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>BY MICHAEL KAPLAN
\n<\/b>REPORTING BY NICK HARDING
\n<\/b>PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER MAKOS<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photography by Christopher Makos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The walls were free of tinfoil. Outside, the sun shone bright, unblocked by clouds of cocaine. Andy Warhol\u2019s Montauk retreat\u2014known as Eothen (\u201cfrom the east\u201d in French) \u2014was in many ways the polar opposite of the frenzied milieu he cultivated at his Manhattan Factory. For that very reason, the clifftop estate became a secret respite for even the most debauched of his party pals: designer Halston, singer Liza Minelli, and model Pat Cleveland among them. The privacy that they relished at the easternmost point in America has consigned many of the memories of that time to history. Now, GRAZIA Gazette: The Hamptons <\/i>invites you inside the Hamptons\u2019 most exclusive enclave ever<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For visitors, Warhol\u2019s seaside home didn\u2019t exactly telegraph the fact that there was a world-famous artist in residence. Designed by famed American architect Stanford White, it was a 5.7-acre estate comprised of a luxe main house, four guest cottages, a garage (the Hamptons home to Warhol\u2019s Rolls Royce), horse stables, and exactly zero of the pop art phenom\u2019s own work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no Warhol art in the house,\u201d Christopher Makos, a photographer who frequently collaborated with Warhol, tells the Gazette <\/i>about the rustic property purchased for $225,000 in 1972 by Warhol and his manager\/filmmaking partner Paul Morrissey. \u201cIt was a great place where Andy could take off his \u2018Andy Warhol\u2019 suit.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNobody was there except for the closest of close friends,\u201d Makos continued, including the aforementioned Halston, Minelli, and Cleveland (who Makos refers to as a \u201cHalstonette\u201d). Even the hordes of fans that surrounded him in the city largely stayed away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Said Makos, \u201cThere were no collectors. Crazy as it sounds, Montauk was too far for them to go.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Montauk was quite a departure for Warhol himself\u2014a man who was far from a beach boy. Alabaster-skinned and rocking an ever-present hairpiece that was known to fly off in the Hamptons wind, Warhol saw the property as less of a dream come true than as an investment. Warhol rented out the property and invited guests that could help boost his profile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill stayed there in 1972 with kids Caroline and JFK Jr., after which Warhol joked about putting a gold \u201cJackie slept here\u201d\u00a0<\/span>plaque above the bed in which JFK\u2019s bride had slept. Avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas filmed the kids dancing around to the Rolling Stones\u2019 Sticky Fingers <\/i>album.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Stones would later camp out at Warhol\u2019s pad during the summer of \u201875. The band rehearsed while shirtless Keith Richards made English breakfast in the kitchen and Mick Jagger swanned around in a Missoni sweater over a T-shirt that read: \u201cLinda Ronstadt QUEEN of L.A.\u201d The nearby Memory Motel even inspired a song on the album.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Montauk Life <\/i>magazine, Mick was known to unwind with a bottle of Grand Marnier at the local dive Shagwong Tavern while then-wife Bianca made herself at home in the joint\u2019s kitchen, shucking clams and organizing their take-out dinners.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the summer of 1982, Warhol began renting out a cottage at Eothen to hard-partying designer Halston. (The scripted Halston <\/i>series on Netflix gets it wrong by implying that Halston bought a home in Montauk, though he did purchase undeveloped acreage.) Ever the businessman, Warhol continually fretted that the designer was getting too good of a deal: Halston paid only $40,000 per summer when another potential tenant was willing to pay twice that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the discount, Warhol rationalized that the famously fastidious Halston would at least take decent care of the place. To sweeten the deal, Halston outfitted the property with his own furniture, all of which was much more chic than the dusty stuff already there. Of course, he brought along bouquets of his beloved orchids as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photography by Christopher Makos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another upside: Warhol was able to visit his own property as a guest when Halston was in residence. Sometimes he\u2019d even catch a ride on Halston\u2019s private jet. The only drawback? A weekend with Halston meant hours listening to his never-ending stream of outr\u00e9 business ideas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Case in point: As famously captured in The Andy Warhol Diaries, <\/i>Halston\u2014who had shocked the fashion world by creating a line for down-market J.C. Penney \u2014 once told Warhol, \u201cOh, darling, wouldn\u2019t it be grand if your paintings cost a dollar and you could just cover houses all over the world with them?\u201d Warhol successfully kept his mouth shut in the moment, but he did write disparagingly in his diary about the \u201cJ.C. Penney concept.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps even more notorious than Halston\u2019s devotion to the mass market was, of course, his rampant drug use. However, Makos\u2014whose photo exhibit including images of Warhol goes up on July 10 at MM Fine Art in Southampton\u2014remembers that Montauk was a whole other story. \u201cNobody took drugs there during the day,\u201d he insists. \u201cPeople went there to take a vacation from everything. It was surfers and fishermen with nothing going on.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He says, \u201cMontauk was more a place where people would smoke a little pot rather than do cocaine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1980s, however, greed was good, and private chefs, private jets, and cavorting supermodels became the order of the day at Eothen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When notorious womanizer and artist Peter Beard rolled through, \u201che was either with <\/i>a cool girlfriend or looking for <\/i>a cool girlfriend,\u201d says Makos. Indeed, in his Diaries<\/i>, Warhol writes about witnessing Beard making out with glamorous Helmut Newton model Margrit Ramme while Beard\u2019s former flame Barbara Allen looked on helplessly and Dick Cavett told Polish jokes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enjoying all of that must have been something of a challenge for Halston during the summer of 1984. He was hiding out in Montauk as rumors swirled about him being pushed out of his own company. According to the biography Simply Halston <\/i>by Steven Gaines, fashion reporters tracked the designer to Eothen and he coolly told them (probably while wearing swim trunks, his slender chest puffed out, a cig emoting smoke from between his lips), \u201cIs that what they\u2019re saying? Well, it\u2019s not true. No way.\u201d Later that year, Halston attempted to buy back his ready-to-wear and made-to-wear businesses. The buy-back bid failed and he did indeed lose some commercial rights to his own name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Halston, it was not only business troubles that might have sullied his Montauk moments. It was also man trouble. He was perpetually on-again, off-again with the volatile, drug-addled, and reportedly well-endowed Warhol muse Victor Hugo. Hugo famously destroyed a Warhol portrait of himself, insisting that his damage improved upon the original, and he once got so violent in the Eothen rental that Halston retreated to his limo and fled to Manhattan. In \u201884, as Halston\u2019s empire crumbled, turncoat Hugo offered to provide evidence that would harm Halston in the event of a lawsuit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On another occasion, according to Halston<\/i>, Warhol\u2019s Montauk retreat helped to provide sanctuary and succor for a freaked-out Liza Minelli. Drinking, drugging and paranoid about the plummeting Skylab satellite falling on her head, Minelli spent a weekend night with Halston on his front porch at Eothen. He insisted that the satellite would fall safely a few hundred feet away, and somehow she believed him. So, they ate dinner outdoors and awaited the crash until word came that Skylab had dropped into the Indian Ocean. According to the book, at that point she was able to relax and get some much-needed sleep.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Warhol died in 1987, it was the end of an era\u2014both for the world at large and for his Montauk hideaway in particular. About 15 months after Warhol\u2019s passing, Halston was told that his rent would double. Unable to afford the increase, he moved out. Three years later, he died from complications brought on by AIDS.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2007, the property was sold to J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler for $27 million. The most recent purchaser\u2014paying $48.7 million in 2015, for just part of the compound\u2014is gallerist Adam Lindemann.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back on the halcyon days at Eothen, long before Montauk became a desirable destination for most New Yorkers, Makos described it as \u201ccreative, interesting people trying to pretend to relax.\u201d The more things change in the Hamptons, the more they stay the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26633,"featured_media":38975,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"\nFifteen Minutes In Montauk - Grazia USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Oysters, champagne and the Rolling Stones in Warhol & Halston\u2019s East End\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/fifteen-minutes-in-montauk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fifteen Minutes In Montauk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oysters, champagne and the Rolling Stones in Warhol & Halston\u2019s East End\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/fifteen-minutes-in-montauk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Grazia USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-10-27T15:36:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/10\/Warhol-halston-featured.png?fit=1280%2C720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/fifteen-minutes-in-montauk\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/fifteen-minutes-in-montauk\/\",\"name\":\"Fifteen Minutes In Montauk - 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