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2025-08-14 00:00:00 Avenue Magazine Design STARS Descend on The MAIDSTONE CLUB

Design STARS Descend on The MAIDSTONE CLUB

“It has been said, ‘build it and they will come. True. But build it beautiful and they will come more often. And preserve it, and they will come forever.” 

Marshall Watson

Golf carts line the drive of the Maidstone Club, caddies caddy. It’s a stunning beach day. The 9th Annual Design Lunch’s star speaker, Marshall Watson holds court. The lunch at the Maidstone benefits the East Hampton Historical Society. The room is filled with decorators known for adorning the most elegant houses in Long Island. 

Marshall, in a tangerine windowpane jacket and natty bow tie, commands the crowd. The ladies (and a few gentlemen) are rapt. “Marshall was the keynote speaker at our first luncheon. He had just published his first book,” Steve Long, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, tells AVENUE. “He was so compelling—off the charts. Now with his second book, “Designing Elegance,” we needed to have him back.”

Sarah Wetenhall
Marshall Watson and Susan Dunlevy

It’s early enough—around noon—plied with rosé, iced tea and maybe a few highballs, we wander into the dining room. I’m seated with special events chair Dale Ellen Leff and Tina Novogratz, a collector who is on the host committee. I spot Debbie Druker, Hollis Forbes, photographer Nick Mele and Sarah Wetenhall who runs the chic and popular Hedges Inn in East Hampton and the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach.

“You know Marshall was a soap opera star, right?” asks a tablemate over chilled corn soup. I didn’t, but it tracks with his dramatic flair. (A quick IMDb search confirms a stint on “As the World Turns” as “J. Marshall Watson” several decades ago.) My chatty new friend was a major publicist for Condé Nast in its glittery heyday. “Are you in the new book?” I ask referring to Michael Grynbaum’s Condé Nast tell-all “Empire of the Elite.” She isn’t sure; she hasn’t read it yet. “All that stuff is true,” she says, firmly. Speaking of scandal, the philanthropist Marion Salmon Hedges wryly confides she is “the shopping cart lady,” referencing the infamous 2018 New York story in which a shopping cart plummeted four floors and landed on her. Marion survived – with a $45 million settlement, much of which she donates to her causes. Marion reminds me to peek at the private cabanas kept by Maidstone members, should I ever get the opportunity—many of which are custom decorated by their owner’s interior designers. “It’s a very important part of the real estate,” she nods knowingly.

I ask Marshall, the star of the day, what he considers the most important part of his work with the East Hampton Historical Society. “It has been said, ‘build it and they will come,’” he tells me. “True. But build it beautiful and they will come more often. And preserve it, and they will come forever.” – JANET MERCEL

Photographs by Rossa Cole 

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