I thought about that while remembering one of my favorite summers. Fifteen years ago, I was at the wedding of W Magazine colleague and close friend Rebecca Guinness at her family’s home in the English countryside. I remember that when we first met, we connected over something wonderfully universal: clothes.
One of the guests at the wedding arrived wearing a Phoebe Philo-era Celine jacket I had desperately wanted the season before. She mentioned she’d found it at an outlet village on her way to the wedding. The next morning, despite very little sleep after dancing until sunrise, I called the store. They had my size in the coat. Unfortunately, my husband was far less enthusiastic about making an outlet detour on the way to the airport than I was. I never got the coat.
You can imagine my excitement when I learned that same shopping destination—Bicester Village, the European outlet-village concept behind that fateful Celine coat—had come to New York, in the form of Belmont Park Village, its first location in North America. Built on the grounds of the Belmont Park racetrack in Elmont, next door to UBS Arena, it doesn’t feel like an outlet mall. The open-air streets, pedestrian squares and boutique-lined pathways are designed to evoke a European hamlet, which somehow makes the whole experience feel like an afternoon abroad.
Even better, the invitation came through a friend I had gone to summer camp with in the ’90s. Somehow, this made the experience feel even more like summer: old friends, familiar faces and a reason to spend an entire day together.
The woman I was shopping with looked at me and laughed. “How do you always walk into a store and immediately find the best piece?” Because for decades, that was my job. The day reminded me why shopping is supposed to be an experience, not simply a transaction.
Missoni surprised me the most. I gravitated toward an elegant knit set with a cardigan that felt suited to a Hamptons evening. Despite my best intentions, I still somehow managed to buy black.
Levi’s was another unexpected highlight. Beyond finding great denim, I loved that they could swap out the hardware and buttons instore, creating something that felt uniquely yours. It’s those details that make shopping memorable.
The concierge service was another thoughtful touch. Rather than carrying bags all day, every purchase was delivered to a single pickup location, leaving us free to wander from store to store, exactly as shopping used to feel.
I remember discovering that, as a teenager, on vacations to France and Italy, I would wander into local stores and shops, meet the owners and learn about the culture along the way. My father took me to Barneys for my 16th birthday to pick out the newest Kate Spade bag, shopping Lanvin in Paris as Alber Elbaz helped select dresses and wandering The Grove for the first time with one of my closest friends, struck by the fact that New York had nothing like it.
Shopping is where so many of our milestones happen. We bought the graduation and wedding dress, the shoes for our first job, the jeans we wear until they’re threadbare because they remind us of who we were when we first put them on—my mother still has the pair from her honeymoon, tucked away at the Long Island house.
And now, Belmont Park Village is where some of those stories will be made, a place I’ll remember for the friends I found it with.