On Saturday, October 10, Kathryn Reid quietly reopened SewHampton inside the Alice + Olivia store on Main Street. The fashion label closes that storefront after summer. Last winter Reid set up six workstations with Brother sewing machines in the same space and taught classes for adults and children, from beginner basics to more advanced work. This season she has added crochet, knitting, embroidery, needlepoint and weaving with other fiber arts instructors, and she offers alterations.
"Together with the Winter Shops Alliance, we are committed to keeping East Hampton Village lively, warm and creative throughout the quieter months," Reid said in a statement quoted by Southforker.
That sewing studio shows how the village gets through winter. From the Saturday before Thanksgiving to the solstice, most of the things worth leaving the house for on a Saturday happen in rooms their owners use for something else: a closed boutique, a church on James Lane, a museum's education center, a handful of inns opening their parlors for an afternoon.
The Lease Behind the Sewing Machines
The Winter Shops program starts from one number. More than 40 percent of stores in East Hampton Village close when the weather gets cold. The program fills those empty or underused storefronts with pop-ups run by local and independent businesses.
The arrangement works for both sides. The summer business holding the master lease is paid rent and utilities while it is closed. The entrepreneur gets reduced rent and a storefront in the village. The program's team makes the matches and picks candidates based on what residents said they wanted to find in the village. A standard winter lease runs six months, October through April.
The idea grew out of The Anchor Society, a local nonprofit that promotes businesses serving the community. Bess Rattray founded it in 2021. Its first winter tenant, in the 2024–25 season, was B. Vintage. Cristina and Linda Buckley sold vintage homewares and gifts from the same Alice + Olivia space at 79 Main Street, opening November 1. When that pilot began, James Lane Post reported that Alice + Olivia's Stacey Bendet saw the program as a way to help local businesses thrive and keep shops open year-round.
The second winter grew to two addresses and four businesses. SewHampton and Our Fabulous Variety Show shared 79 Main Street, while Hedges Lane and Naturally Good took 82 Park Place. After that season, 27east reported that Our Fabulous Variety Show was opening a studio of its own in Bridgehampton. A winter on Main Street at reduced rent gave one business a way into a permanent space.
In 2026 the committee that built the program split from The Anchor Society and formed the Winter Shops Alliance, a separate nonprofit that now runs it. Board member Scott Benaglio was at SewHampton's open house in October, as Dan's Papers photographed.
Saturdays at 11 a.m.
Reid's Charm School, a class on decorating purses, gives this stretch of the calendar a steady weekly time slot. Each session runs 90 minutes at 79 Main Street and costs $50. Sessions start at 11 a.m. on Saturdays, including November 21 and 28 and December 5, 12 and 19, and the schedule continues past the holidays. Event planner Debbie Geppert is collaborating with Reid on some classes that include food.
Each of those Saturdays also has something else happening a short walk away in another borrowed room:
| Saturday | 79 Main Street | Elsewhere in the village |
|---|---|---|
| November 21 | Charm School, 11 a.m. | Share the Harvest Farm's Thanksgiving Market, St. Luke's Episcopal Church, 18 James Lane, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. |
| November 28 | Charm School, 11 a.m. | Guild Hall galleries, 86th Artist Members Exhibition |
| December 5 | Charm School, 11 a.m. | Holiday Cookie Decorating with Citarella at Guild Hall, 1 to 4 p.m.; Tommy Sullivan's Rockin' Holiday Show at East Hampton Library, 2 p.m. |
| December 12 | Charm School, 11 a.m. | Holiday Tour of the Inns, 1 to 4 p.m.; Hampton Ballet Theatre School's Nutcracker at Guild Hall, 1 and 7 p.m. |
| December 19 | Charm School, 11 a.m. | Guild Hall Family Day & Community Holiday Cheer, 1 to 5 p.m. |
A Church, a Museum Classroom, Four Inns
Thanksgiving week starts early on James Lane. Share the Harvest Farm's Thanksgiving Market fills St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Saturday, November 21, with East End food vendors, handmade goods, live music and themed raffle baskets. Every purchase supports the farm's work of providing fresh food to neighbors in need. The church lends its rooms to a farm, and the farm sends the proceeds back into the community.
Guild Hall does the most hosting of anyone this season, and much of it is for other groups. On December 5, holiday cookie artists from Citarella take over the Boots Lamb Education Center for a free drop-in decorating session, part of the East Hampton Village Foundation's SantaFest. On December 11 through 13, the Hampton Ballet Theatre School stages its seventeenth annual Nutcracker there: Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 1 and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m., with advance tickets from $40 to $55. On Sunday, December 20, at 7 p.m., Guild Hall and the Greater East Hampton Chamber of Commerce present a free screening of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
The galleries host members' work. The 86th Artist Members Exhibition runs through January 10, 2027, alongside Michael A. Butler's Somewhere in Time. Butler won Top Honors in last year's members show. Works in the members exhibition range from $75 to more than $20,000, and the proceeds are split evenly between each artist and Guild Hall. Early December is about the only time of year a Guild Hall show is also a shop.
On Saturday, December 12, from 1 to 4 p.m., the Chamber's Holiday Tour of the Inns opens doors that are usually reserved for overnight guests. Four of the stops are on Main Street:
- The Huntting Inn, 94 Main Street
- 1770 House, 143 Main Street
- The Baker House, 181 Main Street
- The Maidstone, 207 Main Street
The tour also includes Journey East Hampton at 490 Pantigo Road and East Hampton Art House at 9 Bon Pinck Way. Walked in order, the Main Street stops cover a little over a hundred house numbers, and Alice + Olivia's 79 Main is just a few doors before the first one. The Nutcracker matinee runs in the same hours, which makes December 12 the fullest afternoon on this calendar.
A Thread From 79 Main to Guild Hall
The handwork happening in the sewing studio also turns up at Guild Hall. On Monday evening, December 14, from 6 to 8 p.m., Guild Hall's monthly Art Social is a loom weaving session with Laurie Lambrecht. Weaving is also one of the fiber arts Reid added at Alice + Olivia this winter. Guild Hall describes the Art Social as a supportive, judgment-free gathering for making art and socializing, with workshops led by experts in their craft.
Later that week, on Thursday, December 17, at 7 p.m., Guild Hall hosts an evening built around Bar: Told by Many, a new 400-page book about The Stephen Talkhouse. In 1987, Peter Honerkamp and a group of family and friends took over the Amagansett bar. Celebrating the neighboring hamlet's music room in the village's arts center fits a season when venues borrow from each other.
On Saturday, December 19, Charm School meets at 11 a.m. as usual. That afternoon, Guild Hall's Family Day & Community Holiday Cheer runs gallery adventures led by its Teen Arts Council and performances by local students from 1 to 3 p.m., then live music, free seasonal treats and hot cocoa until 5.
The sewing tables at 79 Main Street stay through the winter. The Winter Shops program's 2025–26 tenancy at that address ran from October 1 to April 15, and SewHampton's own calendar now runs to April 15, 2027. Class schedules and registration are posted at sewhampton.com, and businesses interested in a winter storefront can apply through wintershops.org.
The Winter Shops program depends on summer leaseholders willing to lend their storefronts to local businesses for the off-season. If you own or hold a village storefront and are thinking about what it could do between October and April, Deborah Srb would be glad to talk it through quietly, from someone who has watched Main Street through more than thirty winters. Work With Deborah.
