If you’re a vegetarian or a club-hater, feel free to scroll down to the bottom. Today, we’ve also got a Montauk restaurant bait-and-switch, AI homeschooling anxiety, the Goodtime Hotel collapse, a Tom Wolfe book is headed for the small screen, Maison Close’s Hamptons return, Jimmy Buffett’s estate fight, and OpenAI’s reported TBPN deal—and what it says about affluential audiences…

At some point you notice the club sandwich is always there. It’s on the room service menu, it’s on the country club menu, it’s on the diner menu, and it looks almost exactly the same in all three places. It can cost $5 or $50 and no one blinks. It likely dates back to the Union Club or Saratoga Clubhouse in the 19th-century, and has never really been reworked, which is part of the appeal. You can tell a lot about a place by how seriously it takes a club sandwich.

I met Zach Weiss, who makes whatever room he’s in more fun, when he was still in college, coming into the city for events, and more than a decade later he’s not just attending them. He’s a fixture. At Ralph Lauren fashion shows, at Pharrell’s Met Gala after-party, at the St. Regis Aspen Snow Polo World Championship. He’s developed a reputation for a few very specific things (vintage tie shopping, hosting, knowing how to take a proper photo) but one of the most idiosyncratic that people go to him for is the club sandwich. Friends text him from hotel rooms, YOLO Journal and Town & Country have both called on him for it. At this point, it has stopped being a bit, and it has become a lane.

The list isn’t fixed—there’s no true number one or last place. But for anyone who travels the way he does, or finds themselves ordering a club more often than they expected to, this is the kind of list you keep in your back pocket.

Rich People Shit: Describe why you’re such a club sandwich connoisseur and why everyone asks for your advice on them.

Zach Weiss: I have no idea how I landed myself in this bizarre role of club sandwich savant (or perhaps snob is a better word?), but I certainly have the waistline and room service receipts to prove it. I think it happened somewhere along the line when I would go on these intense travel tears for weeks, and after getting burnt out on local food, I’d always look for something comforting whether it was in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. Eventually, it just became a case of me succumbing to friends in my Instagram DMs asking: “Need club sandwich content.” Of course I obliged, and eventually made a pair of shoes with the club sandwich on them when I had a collaboration with the slipper brand Stubbs & Wootton.

RPS: What makes the perfect club sandwich?

ZW: I think the elements of a club sandwich have everything to do with your surroundings. If you’re in a fancy hotel, you expect the club sandwich to be precise in its elements and structurally sound. If you’re at a diner or deli, you expect it to be overflowing with turkey and mayonnaise and probably a pickle on the side. I recently weighed in on this in a story for Town & Country, and was surprised at the comments from people who really haven’t experienced good and called out several club sandwiches that I know for a fact don’t belong in the ranks for many reasons including… yellow cheddar cheese, ham, a fully warmed sandwiched (who wants hot lettuce?!), too much bacon, resting on the laurels of the fries on the side vs. the sandwich itself, the list goes on and on and on.

RPS: Why a club?

ZW: There’s something so comforting about it, and the fact that it’s available almost anywhere in the world means it can operate under this guise of being an elevated treat rather than what it really is: the slightly more jet set version of a Happy Meal.

Zach Weiss’ Top 10 12 Club Sandwiches From Around the World

This is almost impossible for me to rank, and I have no doubt these will change over the years as I experience more…

1. Le Sirenuse in Positano, Italy

Beautifully built, and accompanied with a bright, fresh tomato salad in the center for just the right touch of local influence.

2. The Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland

Feels slightly caught in time from an era where mayonnaise was a food group. I love it, especially when it’s so cold and you need something hearty. It’s also available on the hotel’s 24-hour menu.

3. Le Bristol in Paris, France

I love the summer version of their club that comes dressed with lobster rather than chicken. The price is eye-watering, but even the tried and true version is a treat and best enjoyed in the hotel’s center garden. (Tip: If you’d like to experience a lobster club with a much lower price tag, there’s a chain in Paris called Homer that serves a lobster club. It’s not nearly as good, but comes in at just about $30)

4. La Mamounia in Marrakech, Morocco

The last place I would expect to find such a precise club, but it’s presented in this totally symmetrical format that I find mesmerizing, photogenic, and of course tasty.

5. William Poll Deli in New York, New York

I love everything about William Poll and I’m so scared it’s going to go away one day, but in addition to the soups and dips and meatloaf, their turkey club is a nice little treat to have any day of the week except Sunday’s when they’re closed. They also don’t really do merch, but if you ask nicely you can buy a hat!

6. The Hotel du Cap Eden Roc in Cap d’Antibes, France

This hits all of the right notes for a beautifully executed hotel club sandwich, but it’s made even better after you’ve had a jump in the hotel’s pool or, even better, the salty Med.

7. Bobby’s Airway Grill in Dallas, Texas

A mix of a hotel club and a diner club, with the pickles right in the middle of the sandwich. A totally unexpected find.

8. The American Hotel in Sag Harbor, New York

Feels like your grandmother made it. The sides you can select from include coleslaw and potato salad, so it really feels like you’re at a great backyard barbecue.

9. Villa d’Este in Cernobbio, Italy

A hideaway for many American holiday makers in Lake Como, this is the best executed version of the club sandwich I’ve found in Italy. Many others make the error of building their club in the style of the Italian tramezzini, which a club sandwich certainly is not.

10. Edith’s in New York, NY

Their schnitzel club isn’t a true club sandwich, but it deserves a spot on this list for the simple fact that each and every ingredient feels fresh and thoughtful, starting with the beautifully thick-yet-soft bread. It’s a commitment of sandwich though, given the schnitzel, so I usually recommend splitting it with a friend.

11. Clark St Diner in Los Angeles, California

A very California-style iteration served in a midcentury diner on nice wheat bread and a generous portion of fresh avocado.

12. Donohue’s in New York, NY

Donohue’s feels untouched from when it opened in 1950, and this club sandwich always comes with a show. It’s best ordered at the bar from the longstanding Irish barman named Johnny. Make sure to order it as a “junior club” so they remove the center slice of bread, and choose coleslaw as your side. Not fries. You’re guaranteed to make a friend at the bar, usually one of the regulars, who will always have a tale to share, and the Donohue’s club is just the right snack to go along with it.

Honorable Mention: The McClub

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but a sleeper hit we discovered during a recent visit to Vienna was that some of the McDonald’s locations offer a “McClub.” It is by no means actually a substitute for a proper club sandwich, but at $5, why not give it a try?

In today’s letter: AI homeschooling anxiety, the Goodtime Hotel collapse, Maison Close’s Hamptons return, a Montauk restaurant bait-and-switch, The Bonfire of the Vanities gets a series adaption, Jimmy Buffett’s estate fight, and OpenAI’s reported TBPN deal—and what it says about affluential audiences….

• Apple is developing a series adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, with David E. Kelley writing and Matt Reeves directing, taking another swing at one of New York’s most famous rich-people meltdown stories. Good or bad, I will be watching.

• Frightening article in Town & Country. Wealthy parents are pulling their kids out of traditional schools and into AI-powered homeschooling or small, custom setups because they don’t think the standard system holds up anymore. If AI is already coming for entry-level jobs, the move is to skip the grades-to-college pipeline and train your kid for something else entirely. Where is this all headed?

• The Goodtime Hotel, the Pharrell Williams–backed South Beach project, just laid off all 126 employees after its operator exited, with a foreclosure battle already underway. When it opened in April 2021 with a full Pharrell-and-friends rollout, it was the talk-of-the-town in Miami.

  

• Let’s try this again…Maison Close, the Paris cabaret-style Soho restaurant, will return to the Hamptons this summer after its initial Montauk outpost burned down the night before its Memorial Day 2023 debut. It won’t be in the same spot though (bad luck?); they’re reopening at the Capri in Southampton this June.

• Also making waves out East: A new Montauk restaurant, Este, was approved as a relatively low-key spot, but neighbors got hold of an investor deck showing a 455-person capacity and DJ setup at night, suggesting it was sold to the town as dinner and to investors as something much closer to Surf Lodge. Uh oh….

• Jimmy Buffett’s $275 million estate fight is now heading to a Florida appeals court in West Palm Beach, where his widow is challenging co-trustee Richard Mozenter, a financial adviser who has been using trust money to pay his own legal fees while battling her for control. Her argument is he shouldn’t be able to use the same pot of money to fight against her. Am I missing something? How is he allowed to do this?

• If you work in media or tech, the thing you’ve probably been talking about for the past twenty-four hours is that OpenAI reportedly bought TBPN, the Silicon Valley livestream/podcast that treats tech like a sport, in a deal said to be in the “low hundreds of millions.” The exact number hasn’t been given, but at that level it could approach—or even surpass—The Joe Rogan Experience, which has held the record for the most expensive podcast deal. Not sure we’ll ever know. What makes this so notable is that TBPN has only been around for about two and a half years, and has a relatively small subscriber base (around 58K on YouTube, if I’m getting my numbers right). It’s a perfect example of what corp dev execs have been telling me when it comes to media: it’s not necessarily the size of your audience, but the size of their wallets. They don’t want aspirational anymore, they want affluential. And who is more affluential than the Silicon Valley set that listens to TBPN?

  As for their buyer, OpenAI, well, call it less a media acquisition and more a messaging one: instead of chasing coverage, they now own the show everyone in tech already watches.

  If you or someone you know is an expert in something that feels very RPS, let’s talk: carson@readrps.com. And if you don’t yet follow @readrps on Instagram, now is the time to start.

If you were on top of it, and in the market, you probably started looking for a Hamptons rental months ago. This year lagged. It was cold, there was snow on the ground, and a lot of places didn’t show well, so people waited. What is usually settled by now is still being figured out.

Which is how, in early April, some Hamptons realtors dealing in one of the wealthiest areas out East have found themselves talking about something they do not usually have to factor in. The geese. But not just any geese.

On top of this rather absurd story, RPS has a subscriber dispatch from on one of the most talked about restaurants in recent weeks (lets get more subscriber reports in these letters!), a Brooklyn cheese warehouse that became a scene, a new Ibiza no-phones nightclub, why SUVs are making the station wagon extinct, and more...

NEWS: Hamptons Goose Gate

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If not, consider this your prompt. But because I’m nice, here’s a quick summary: For one week a year, a few hundred seniors from New York’s most expensive private schools effectively turn Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas into a kind of pre-college finishing school, just with far more drinking and far less supervision. They arrive in tight school clusters—Horace Mann, Dalton, Trinity—and spend the week cycling between the resort’s pools, the casino floor, and late-night hotel room parties, with wristbands that give them near-total access to the property. The fact that this is essentially a college-style spring break—but for high school seniors—is the part I couldn’t quite grasp. So I went straight to the horse’s mouth to hear how this year’s trip played out.

Meet Rich People Shit’s anonymous Private School Kid—RPS’s PSK, or the PSK of RPS, whichever you prefer—who hadn’t even been home from the Bahamas for 24 hours before I had him on the phone walking me through the entire trip.

My favorite anthropological detail, though—and perhaps the most reminiscent of my own high school experience—was that a lot of the girls go on “P.I.ets” before the trip (“the Paradise Island diet”). You can dress up teenage disordered eating with a cute name, but some things don’t change.

Also in today’s letter: how the wealthy are dealing with the crazy lines of TSA, Montecito’s post office petition, another European art heist, Hunt Slonem’s Ritz takeover and Newport mansion, Rolex “Pepsi” mania, a $1 billion Saudi hotel push and more…

PSK is RPS’s anonymous Private School Kid correspondent, reporting from Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Paradise Island, Bahamas. This interview is a firsthand account and has been edited and condensed for length.

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Ken Griffin paid $44.6 million for a Stegosaurus. A T. rex named Stan sold for $31.8 million. Leonardo DiCaprio has been around this market for years. Tech entrepreneur Dan O’Dowd owns a nearly complete T. rex named Samson. Russell Crowe is an avid fossil collector. And Nicolas Cage once bought a Tyrannosaurus skull for about $276,000—until he had to return it after it turned out to be stolen from Mongolia (isn’t that a plot-line from one of his movies?)

Meteorites sit right next to this. Pieces of the moon and Mars have sold for hundreds of thousands and into the millions, including a record-breaking Martian specimen—yes, I said Martian specimen—that brought in over $5 million at auction.

Most of the top end trades go to buyers who never get named at all. So I spoke with Kunal Gandhi, co-founder of BLANCO Art, who works with collectors and scientists to source and place pieces like these to give us a glimpse into how these end up in private collections. Today you’re getting a rare look at the inside world of buying dinosaur fossils and meteorites.

Also in today’s letter, in case you have absolutely no interest in the prehistoric or space: scroll down for Philippe Chow opening its new Fifth Avenue location today after leaving the Upper East Side, a Botoxed-up Hamptons shoplifter hits Dôen, the rise of the bunker boat at the Palm Beach International Boat Show, the must-read story of the day, and more…

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The finance bro has not changed as much as he thinks he has. Sure, the logos are different, the uniform is more casual, the habits have been updated. Bear Stearns becomes Citadel. BBM becomes Signal. Cocaine becomes NAD. Squash becomes padel.

But what changed is where it all shows up. This “culture” (are we calling it that?) used to stay inside offices and on trading floors. Now it’s in everything else. The 6 a.m. training block before the desk. The cold plunge between calls. The padel court in Miami between meetings. The supplement drawer that travels with him. The Thursday flight out, laptop still open. And the language moved too. It’s all framed as optimization now. Sleep, recovery, output. Repeat! It shows up in Industry. It gets explained on Odd Lots and Unhedged. It gets broken down on TBPN and Money Stuff, and then people start trying it on. There’s even a merch brand, run by the offspring of a finance giant, packaging the whole thing into something you can wear. (And I tell you all about that today after the paywall).

The older version of the finance bro was obvious. The one today is harder to spot because it borrows the language of something else. It looks like discipline or reads like taste or presents as a life that is fully under control. It’s none of those things. It’s still Leonardo Dicaprio pounding his chest in the The Wolf of Wall Street or Ben Affleck addressing a room of junior bankers in Boiler Room or Michael Douglas explaining greed in a shareholder meeting in Wall Street, just dressed up well enough that people stop questioning it.

Along with a finance-coded merch story so good you’ll be reaching for your credit card, there’s one about the plot line Ryan Murphy must have been crazy (or blind) not to include in Love Story, involving JFK Jr. putting a nearly naked photo of himself in his own magazine. There’s also Monaco’s Rose Ball dance floor this past weekend, the UES institutions that can’t seem to decide if they’re closing or not, and more. Midweek, but we’re keeping it interesting here at RPS (always).

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I just spent the better part of a week on a 96-acre private island off the northeast coast of Andros in the Bahamas (and not for work no less. Added bonus). Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Kamalame Cay (pronounced Kah-mal-a-me). Given who goes, it feels like a place I should have known.

I’ve been to Nassau, Harbour Island, Lyford Cay, Elbow Cay, the list goes on. Kamalame is part of that world, just not the part people usually talk about. You get there by private ferry, helicopter, or seaplane, and then there are two options: there’s a once-a-month lunch party or you can stay for a proper vacation. It’s owned by David and Michael King-Hew (David’s family were the originators), and there’s very little written about it online beyond a Town & Country story my friend Lindsay Silberman wrote eight years ago called “Inside the Secret Brunch Party Where Billionaires Let Loose.” Lunch is one Saturday a month. It’s a mix of guests of the island and people who fly in for it or bring their boats over, stay all day, and then go back to wherever they came from.

There are somewhere between 40 and 50 places to stay, from one-bedroom bungalows to expansive mansions, plus a Great House and pool where everyone ends up at some point. After a couple of days, you’ve met most of the island.

The guest list is what you think it is. I’m not going to get into names, especially since some of them are now subscribers to this newsletter (hi guys, welcome to RPS!), which has raised the average net worth in here in a way I didn’t think was possible. But there was a couple featured in a documentary by a writer you all like on Substack, and a family I profiled years ago. The word “billionaire” gets thrown around a lot. On Kamalame Cay, it’s real.

If we’re nice, maybe I can convince David and Michael King-Hew to do a Q&A for us about the place and the amazing life they have built for themselves in a future letter. Fingers crossed.

If you’re spending the cost of a Midwest mortgage on plastic surgery, the setting starts to matter. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the interiors of these Park Avenue offices feel as competitive as the client lists. Pre-war spaces, real art, proper lighting, materials that read as expensive as the work they’re performing. You understand what you’re paying for before anyone touches your face.

If you’re wondering why I’m thinking about this, it’s because I’m sitting in one right now as I type you this letter. No, I’m not trying to look like a Kardashian. In a matter of minutes (or maybe I already have, depending when you read this), I am getting a CO2 laser from Dr. Sean Alemi. And it’s combining two things I care about more than I’d like to admit: aesthetics and interiors.

I was introduced to Dr. Alemi through my friend Rachel Harrison, who had some, um, “real work” done by him. (She gave me permission to be specific. I’m exercising restraint.) She did extensive research and told me he was the best. I went to see him a couple of months ago insisting I needed fat transfer under my eyes (yes, I will be writing more about fat transfer in the future and how I ended up being obsessed with it). I was ready for him to say yes. He said no. Flat out. Instead, he told me to get a CO2 laser. (I’m usually the one playing hard to get, so I was immediately interested). For context, I have not really done anything to my face. Most of you don’t know what I look like, and I prefer it that way. (Ed note: I am not trying to be some great mystery. There are pictures of me on the About Me page. ). I’ve done Botox and PRFM. Which, at this point, feels conservative. So here I am, about two and a half months later, about to have the top layer of my face taken off. But in an office that looks a lot different than the one I first came to. It has gotten an upgrade. And now so will my face.

They’re going to numb me for an hour or two, and then I will be on lockdown. Think Samantha Jones in Sex and the City. That is the closest reference point I have and it is not reassuring. I will report back and let you know if I am wearing a veil around town for the next week or two.

Again, this is happening in his new office. (I am not calm about it, this is not sponsored, and I am not getting paid to write this.) Dr. Alemi, who has a six-month waiting list, renovated a 2,000 square foot pre-war maisonette with Elterman Finer. There’s real art on the walls. Joan Mitchell, Picasso and Matisse lithographs (there’s one in the office where I am sitting at the moment), Degas sketches, Herringbone floors, Phillip Jeffries wallpaper, antique Italian light fixtures, custom marble, a private entrance. (My AD background rearing its head again). Is this happening everywhere, or am I just noticing it now? Is this a Dr. Alemi thing, a Park Avenue thing, or will they all get to this level of design eventually? I’ll tell you this. If I have to get the top layer of my face removed in the name of beauty, I certainly want to do it in a beautiful place. I have a feeling that’s probably everyone though.

A little housekeeping. I’ll be in London for about a week April mid-month. If you have recommendations for restaurants, hotels for a night here or there, shops, member clubs, or exhibits, I would love to hear them. If you’ll be there and want to grab coffee, let me know. I’m especially interested in unusual things and trends popping up, and would love to touch base on anything that feels very RPS or worth covering elsewhere. Or even just worth enjoying.

I also have some exciting things coming for RPS paid subscribers next month. And in case you’re sitting on any, I’m looking for any finance tips or news for our Wednesday edition of News & Noted. Also, I think you’ll like Friday’s RPS Guide. It’s very, very unusual and not something you’ve seen anywhere else.

In today’s letter: Bar di Bello reservations open, Hamptons chef panic, Taylor Swift goes Palm Beach, the OnlyFans billionaire dies, Mezzaluna backlash, peptide stacks and more…

• Dionne Searcey, the wealth and power reporter for NYT and another friend of the letter, did a great piece for the paper about how Hamptons private chefs are already gone for the summer, with bookings locked in months ahead and very little left if you’re late.

• Bar di Bello, the Silver Lake restaurant that has been floating around for months as one of the more anticipated openings in LA this year, started taking reservations today.

  

• Palmer, Palm Beach’s version of the New York Post, reports that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have plans to build on a “major” lot they have purchased on the north end of the island.

• Leonid Radvinsky, the secretive billionaire owner of OnlyFans, has died at 43.

• The UES is in an uproar over Mezzaluna’s expected closure next week. A friend of the letter went to see for themselves and found there’s already a petition circulating to try to keep it open.

• A San Francisco startup called Superpower is selling personalized peptide stacks to make people hotter, smarter, and healthier, depending on how you define each.

  Today’s letter is free. Most are not. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to RPS to receive all news, interviews, upcoming invites, and more. And if you’re not following @readrps on Instagram yet, now is a good time.

Also in today’s letter: Paris hotels striking out on Birkins, more from the Park Slope swinger saga (send help), the biohacking takeover of ski season, and restaurant news.

Rich People Shit: You’ve played tennis all over the world. What, in your view, makes a tennis court truly great?

Caitlin Thompson: First, I just want to state that even when I’m playing on a truly terrible court—iffy bounces, flapping nets, cracks galore, sometimes with greenery shooting up through the seams—I’m still playing tennis, you know? Good courts are relatively easy to come by, but the great ones have mystique: history, architectural significance, their juxtaposition with the locale in which they’re located. The best courts are almost always on natural surfaces, the thick red clay that stains your socks when you slide around them and the vibrant green lawns that absorb every sound except the ball on your strings just make the experience that much better. Not only do these tend to have more lore associated with them, grass and clay courts are significantly easier on your body, which means you feel like you can play forever. Below, the most beautiful places to play, and if I don’t specify a court, assume I mean Centre Court.

The Top 10 Best Tennis Courts in the World

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First, in Noted: Hori, the Midtown East izakaya with a members-club-style reservation system, has become one of those New York tables people will do objectively insane things to access, including, apparently, paying $2,000 just to get in once. RPS spoke to a man who went to absurd lengths to secure a seat, largely for the privilege of being able to say he’d been.

And for those of you unmoved by restaurant politics because your GLP-1 is dialed a little too high, there is also alleged sex-swinging drama at elite Brooklyn elementary schools, a $100 hot dog at the Miami Open, and the event I somehow failed to include on the Billionaires Social Calendar.

Enjoy.

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In reality, it looks like the drop is scheduled for Tuesday, March 17th, at least according to S.As1 (and clients with well-connected S.As) at the Madison Avenue, Greenwich, and Beverly Hills boutiques. (How many of you got the text from your S.A.? I’m told some clients didn’t hear a word, perhaps because the mania in Europe has already been… intense.)

Today we have a Q&A with Kathleen Schmidt of Publishing Confidential, and we’re diving into one of my favorite subjects: Rich People Publishing (RPP)?

I have a lot of personal experience in this arena. Most people name-check me as a career journalist, but I’m also a five-time ghostwriter who has quietly used that path to keep herself in (mostly secondhand) designer clothing and very expensive dinners. That means I know exactly what it looks like to work with celebrities and top business executives on a book from start to finish and what money can really buy you in publishing. It also means I’ve seen the glamorous side of the business and the less glamorous one.

Today we’re going to talk about the mechanics behind that world: vanity publishing arrangements, the strange genre of wealth porn, and the well-known industry trick of bulk-buying thousands of copies to manufacture a spot on the bestseller lists. And of course, the “ugly” side of the industry too.

First, there’s Amy Griffin’s memoir The Tell. The venture capitalist and philanthropist’s book has become the center of a rapidly escalating controversy involving allegations about the role psychedelic therapy played in resurfacing memories of childhood abuse (and a lawsuit that now threatens to upend the entire narrative around the book). If you’re not caught up on what’s going on with Griffin, I strongly suggest reading these two New York Times stories here and here before getting into our interview below.

Then there’s Sarah Ferguson. The Duchess of York reportedly secured a roughly $2 million deal for a memoir that was supposed to be her big publishing comeback only for the project to stall out before it ever really reached the market.

And finally, there’s Belle Burden’s novel Strangers, the debut that has become one of those fascinating publishing stories. Burden, whose life blew up and who decided to write about it, is the extremely private granddaughter of Babe Paley.

To help unpack all of this, we’re speaking with Kathleen Schmidt. Schmidt is the writer behind Publishing Confidential, a newsletter that has become required reading for people who actually work in the book business (and thousands of those who don’t—that’s how good it is). She’s a publishing industry veteran with more than two decades of experience in publicity, marketing, and just about every other function required to shepherd a book into the marketplace. She’s also the founder and president of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, a boutique firm that advises authors and publishers on strategy and how to survive the modern publishing ecosystem. In other words, she’s exactly the person you want explaining how all of this stuff actually works. She’s also incredibly blunt, which, in publishing, is a rare and extremely useful quality. So I asked her to walk us through the things everyone in (rich people) publishing is talking about right now.

All of that, plus our usual round-up of rich-person chaos, after the jump.

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And in Palm Beach County, appearances matter, which is why a single phone number operates as both a run-of-the-mill taxi company and a black-car service. If you know the password, the ride suddenly looks a lot less like a taxi and a lot more like a chauffeur on retainer. (Maybe I should try it this weekend when I’m there. Although at the moment I’m slightly concerned about even getting there. The forecast looks rough and I’m not entirely convinced my flight will even make it. Not a good weekend to be heading to Florida, even if the cold front is coming back to New York).

We’ve also got a lot of good stuff in the round-up today (and I appreciate all the subscriber submissions, so please keep sending those in). Hermès sample sale invites are out (are you on the list? A few details below). Plus details about the Blazy mania (including the ones you can only find on the toilet bowl that is Twitter), Lauren Santo Domingo’s birthday cake and Forbes scaring us yet again by talking about how Generation Z is getting rich on AI while the rest of us trying to figure out the settings on our iPhones.

And if you’re in New York enjoy the weather. While we still got it.

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The Hulu and Disney+ limited series has broken the record for the most-watched limited series debut across the two platforms, with more than 25 million hours streamed across the first five episodes alone. Those numbers are enormous …

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Most people assume when someone buys a private jet the hard part is over. In reality that’s when the redesign usually begins.

I’ve known about the niche world of private jet interior designers for a long time — I actually discussed it with Ken Fulk during my stint at AD while working on a story about eight years ago. But I discovered Aurora Saboir, the founder and lead designer of Aurora Aero Design, a boutique studio based in Europe, through Lane Florsheim’s beautiful Wall Street Journal story a couple of weeks ago. The piece covered so much ground that I found myself wanting to know more about Saboir in particular, whose studio focuses almost entirely on private jet interiors.

Her clients are the kind of owners who buy a $70 or $80 million aircraft and then immediately start thinking about how to make the inside feel less like a plane and more like somewhere they’d actually want to spend fifteen hours. That might mean turning sections of the cabin into living rooms instead of rows of seats, designing bedrooms that feel closer to hotel suites, or experimenting with materials that read more residential than corporate.

Saboir works directly with private owners rather than manufacturers, which means the brief often starts with lifestyle rather than aviation. One client might want the plane designed almost entirely around sleep and recovery. Another wants a space where a large family can eat and watch movies together while crossing continents. She has also collaborated with people like Swizz Beatz, whose concept aircraft interior with Saboir caught attention across the aviation and design worlds.

She’s particularly interested in how the aircraft connects to the rest of a client’s luxury ecosystem. In some cases that means integrating objects like watches so they remain digitally linked to the aircraft even after the owner steps off the plane.

In the Q&A below, Saboir talks about how she accidentally ended up designing private jets during the pandemic, the moment when the world essentially ran out of aircraft during COVID, what private owners actually ask for when they customize a cabin, and why the next decade of private aviation interiors may revolve less around flashy luxury and more around technology, wellness, and a very different onboard experience.

And of course, it wouldn’t be RPS without the usual round-up of clever things to read, talk about, and pretend you discovered yourself. But that’s just the icing on the cake, isn’t it?

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A note about some of the emails and messages I’ve been receiving: a lot of you have been asking for more of me in these newsletters. More photos of me, more personal anecdotes, more opinions from me. I’m not sure if that’s just because of the platform this is on (Substack has a plethora of first-person writing and is very personality-driven), but I’ve never been that type of writer. I struggle even with the small amount of first person I use here, because I’m a capital-J journalist, a hard-R reporter, and I tend to hide behind that.

While I love looking at all the photos of you on here and clicking through your mood boards and links to products that I (quickly) buy, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable enough to send out a letter full of selfies and sponsored links. But who knows. I also once said I would never start a newsletter. I just wanted to address it because every week the requests for more information about me get louder, when this really has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with RPS. And isn’t that what we’re all here for collectively? Rich People Shit?

Speaking of, today’s letter is full of it. One of the most recognizable clubhouses in the world is now preparing its first American outpost within the year, people tell me on both sides of the pond, and while this is something that has circulated quietly in hospitality circles for some time, it is now beginning to look very real. And since Monday’s most popular item was about the Shah’s Audemars Piguet, I thought we’d go down a similar rabbit hole: the unlikely origin story of the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon. It began in the early 1970s as a rugged military vehicle proposed by the Shah of Iran for his army before eventually evolving into one of the most recognizable luxury SUVs on earth (and, unofficially, the dream car of sugar babies everywhere).

There’s also a strong round-up of stories, podcasts, and other media and tidbits to take you into the weekend and hold you over until the next letter on Saturday, which includes an interview worth waiting for.

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It’s March 2nd. Consider this February’s installment of our monthly ongoing audit here at RPS.1 February was short and expensiv…

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Before we begin, I want to acknowledge what is happening right now in the world. The U.S. strikes against Iran are unfolding in real time, and it would feel strange to glide past that as if nothing is happening. I try, when appropriate, to address serious subjects here (the economy, the Epstein files, the broader machinery of power) and this certainly qualifies.

That said, this letter has always been intended as a moment of educated, informed levity. Not ignorance or indifference, but a deliberate pause from the noise. There is value in understanding the world, and there is also value in stepping away from it for a few minutes to look at power through a different lens. Today’s letter lives in that second category. The world continues outside this page. For the next few minutes, we’ll turn to something lighter.

Behind the Orange Curtain

Noémie Leclercq is a Paris-based investigative journalist who works at Glitz, the independent bilingual publication. She is an expert on all things Hermès, and also covers the luxury second-hand market and how it quietly reshapes the primary one; the lobbying reach of heritage houses far beyond their boutiques; and the darker ecosystem that shadows the industry, which includes counterfeiting networks, organized theft, home-jackings and the criminal economies that luxury sustains whether it admits it or not. We met when I stumbled on her work which caused her to stumble on RPS (or maybe it was the other way around?), and to say I was blown away would be an understatement.

She also publishes a Substack called Follow the Money. She writes mostly in French, translating select pieces into English, though after this, that may need to change.

I knew I had to do an interview with her, and she did not disappoint. You all know what an orange box is when it comes to Hermès, but what about the elusive blue box? And what does it actually signal? She also explains how billionaires bypass the relationship ritual without performing loyalty in-store. And Noémie even names the high-end replica maker still operating openly on Instagram, producing superfakes so good they can cost up to €6,000, and sometimes sourcing Hermès skins from within the same supply chain as the company.

And because the bag is never the end of the story, we also get into the secondary and grey markets, flipping punishments from Hermès, resale markups, vault storage, geographic paranoia, and the moment authenticity becomes less moral question and more strategic one. When I tell you this interview is everything Hermès and luxury bag lovers want and more, I am not kidding. And maybe, just maybe, if we’re good, Noémie will answer all of our burning questions in the comments section. If there’s something you want her to follow up on, drop it below — and we’ll see what we can make happen.

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Some people go to Frieze Los Angeles to be seen. Some go to sell. A few go to buy. And one account goes to watch.

If you spend any time around this ecosystem, you already know the green grid and the all caps. The posts that land mid-preview and make half the room nervous. @ArtNotNet has built a following by saying the quiet part clearly. No selfies, no soft alliances, no “so thrilled to be here.” Just commentary that feels like it was written from the back of the room while everyone else is performing.

She doesn’t need to post the fair. She posts what the fair reveals.

The day before Frieze officially opens in Los Angeles, we’re giving you something rare: an interview with the person behind the account everyone screenshots and pretends they didn’t.

She is bigger than one tent and bigger than one week. She has become the unofficial narrator of the market itself. When we asked her how she would describe @artnotnet, she didn’t hesitate:

BABE. I’M ANONYMOUS. (FOR A REASON.) NOT HERE FOR THE SELFIE.

I’M NOT AN INSIDER. I’M THE COMMENTARY.

I’M THE VOICE IN THE BACK OF THE VIP PREVIEW TAKING IT ALL IN SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.

PART FAIRY GODMOTHER. PART MARKET WATCHDOG. PART GROUP CHAT YOU WISH YOU WERE IN.

I DON’T BREAK NEWS. I BREAK THE CEILING. AND OCCASIONALLY A FEW EGOS.

I CLOCK THE SEATING CHART. I READ THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM KNOWS IT’S BEING READ.

I’M NOT SELLING ACCESS. I’M SELLING AWARENESS.

Below, she talks Frieze. In real time. No euphemisms. And for free subscribers, highlights live on @readrps.

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There are now people you hire to help you get into a private club.

Maxime's, Augusta National Golf Club, San Vicente Bungalows, Apogee, White's, Cypress Point Club, Aman Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Yellowstone Club, Maidstone Club, Annabel's, The Madison Club, Core Club, Liberty National Golf Club, The Battery… In certain zip codes, joining the rig…

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But I’m more interested in his next project.

What he’s been developing since the fall has nothing to do with Camelot or doomed romance (at least as far as I can tell). It is about rich women, very expensive surgeons, and the person who sits between them.

Below: why this could be Ryan Murphy’s most RPS-adjacent project yet.

And free subscribers, hang tight. Monday’s on me. But as always, the really good stuff is behind the paywall.

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First up: Are We Dating the Same Guy? is a national network of city-specific Facebook groups where women post the men they’re seeing and crowdsource answers. In New York, membership ballooned into the tens of thousands before the original group was taken down in 2025 after legal trouble. It resurfaced in backup form, but for the past month, thousands of women have been kicked out and blocked, and members are asking what exactly is going on. RPS has the answer.

From upstate, we were sent a copy of the Rhinebeck planning board minutes confirming that as of February 17, 2026, Soho House Hudson Valley officially has its sign-off. The long-rumored Grasmere project can now move toward construction, right when luxury hospitality developments are flooding the region.

More on both after the jump!

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