Richard Christiansen: I know when we discussed this year, we were like, “Should we throw out the car thing altogether and just build a yacht club?” East Hampton is fancy, but there’s nothing to do, so [last year] people came in and had so much fun. One of the important things for me this time was a lot of movement, noise, and constant motion.
Heather Kaminetsky: Last time we had the stationary car, and there was a lot of movement but not in the center. Bringing energy to the center was super important. Even though we’re in the middle of town, we’re a little on the outskirts, which was an advantage. It became a destination.
Christiansen: This year, it’s going to as well.
Kaminetsky: The creative vision that you put together is amazing. For Mytheresa in particular, it’s a physical manifestation of our digital platform: If Mytheresa came to life, what would this feel like? You did an amazing job of creating this energy in the front room. The back room is very moody and chic. It has a sexiness to it. It gives people a minute to breathe.
Christiansen: Play is such an important piece of DNA for both our brands. Especially now in a digital world, analog play is such a precious thing. The original idea came from a sculpture in LACMA by Chris Burden called Metropolis II. It’s a little slot car machine. We thought, Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could take that idea of a kid’s slot car racetrack but make it enormous? Could we have the cars going around iconic pieces but also around iconic pieces of architecture?
It’s executed in a way that feels sophisticated and elevated, not junior at all. As soon as people see it, they’re going to smile. It’s so outrageous and ridiculous.
Kaminetsky: You also recreated the “Inconvenience Store.” That looks amazing this year.
Christiansen: I had to. The original concept was 30 products that are hard to make, grow, and harvest. They’re all a pain in the ass. I care so deeply about growers and makers in the same way you care about creators and materials. The store is our version of 7/11, just full of stuff that’s really fussy—the glory of all things inconvenient.
Spice strawberries are the number one. They sell out constantly. Harry’s Berries, where we get the strawberries from, is an iconic farm in California. They’re $40 a pound, but it’s an amazing farm. They treat their soil so well. If you’re a chef and you like strawberries, that is the one place in America to get them.
Kaminetsky: Somebody came yesterday as we were working on the space and was like, “Can I buy the strawberries?” We were like, “No, we’re not open.”
Christiansen: Not yet. The feel of everything is really different this year. It’s a bit ’80s. I was just in Japan and saw a lot of stuff from the height of Japanese ’80s shopping culture. I was like, Oh, this feels like what we’re doing.
Kaminetsky: We are going to have some extreme pieces on the jewelry wall this year, too. If you’ve ever been to Formula 1, they have these lounges where there are beautiful accessories and items. These are not just small little earrings. These are statement pieces to start a conversation.
Christiansen: I can’t believe you built that out.
Kaminetsky: There’s so many pieces. We have the bones of the auto body shop. This year, it was a totally new production of the space while keeping the bones of the auto body shop. We’ve been working on it since November. Last year, we did it in 12 weeks.
Christiansen: We have air conditioning this year, which is wow.
Kaminetsky: And a dressing room! And a lot more product you can take from the store. Last summer, we had men’s, women’s, and kids. Now, we have dog, too: There are Bottega Veneta dog bowls.
Christiansen: We’ve also got some beautiful lavender Porsche Taycans outside. I didn’t know that Porsche has this weird, wonderful history in car colors. That idea started because Flamingo is near the Huntington Botanical Gardens where you can breed your own hybrid rose. One of the original thoughts we had was, Could we do a rose to push one of the iconic Porsche colors? They have this incredible lavender. We never made the rose, but they did produce the cars.
Kaminetsky: You could come test-drive them almost all summer.
