Renaissance man Robert McKinley is an environmental designer, a hotelier, DJ, installation artist, clothing designer, window dresser, surfer—and game changer. Here in Montauk, he’s best known as the creative vision behind the trendsetting properties, The Surf Lodge (which has a new restaurant, Byron—currently one of the hardest tables to reserve) and Ruschmeyer’s. “The Surf Lodge was my dream beach house,” says McKinley, who has been riding the waves for about six years, from Mauritius to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica. “The Surf Lodge, in my head, was really a clubhouse for my group of surfing friends and our little community.”
Montauk had been on McKinley’s radar since he was a teenager. “There’s no other place in the Hamptons where you have all of those little motels that are on the water,” he recollects. “When the [Surf Lodge] property came up, I remember my older cousins going into all of these beach bars in Montauk in the ’80s, and I remember that soundtrack in my head and the vibe and the clothes.” McKinley channeled those early memories into The Surf Lodge’s laid-back luxury ambience and accompanying line of sportswear. The hotel’s ensuing popularity helped transform the social dynamic of the sleepy, quiet fishing village into an international resort. Soon thereafter, he sold his stake in The Surf Lodge and last summer opened Ruschmeyer’s, an edgy beach-themed hotel down the block that instantly became Montauk’s hottest destination. “I love the energy and the crowds that we do get,” he says of Ruschmeyer’s. “We treat it like a beach bar, and that’s really the way that I’ve always looked at it. It’s not an exclusive place that we’re picking and choosing people. On a Wednesday evening the dining room is full with locals, and then Saturday nights is a party.”
Saturday night is also when McKinley DJs under the nom de guerre Tito Cruz. “Music has always been a huge part of my life,” he says. “Nightclubs are a lot of fun, and I always have that energy and that feeling of being on a dance floor, that feeling of the sound system and the music and that’ll never leave me.”
McKinley, 36, began his career creating whimsical windows for Tommy Hilfiger, Giorgio Armani, and Donna Karan, which led him to design projects and high-profile events for Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, as well as The Watermill Center’s annual gala and Robert Wilson’s 25th anniversary at the Guggenheim Museum. These parties whetted his appetite for nightlife, and it was his friends from East Hampton—Unik Ernest, Lionel “Kyky” Conille, and Dimitri Hyacinthe—who offered him his first nightclub interior design job. “Unik really set me loose,” McKinley says of his groundbreaking work for the Haitian-themed Manhattan hot spot PM. “I went to Haiti with Kyky, and to this day it was one of the most powerful trips I’ve ever taken.”
The success of PM inspired concepts for Cain, Table 50, GoldBar, and La Dea in South Beach and sealed his reputation as a venue designer. “I like smaller nightlife,” he says. “I go to some of these big clubs and don’t quite understand it sometimes. Dance music is different now, too. Whether it’s Ruschmeyer’s, GoldBar, or The Surf Lodge, our soundtrack has always been very classic, a lot of fun, older soul, funk, and rock ’n’ roll.”
Yet no matter his choice of venue or musical overture, McKinley carries with him a childhood memento as a reminder to stay young at heart. “In anything creative we always have to think like a child without boundaries,” he says of the logo for his company, Robert McKinley + Creative Services, which includes a silhouette he drew in grade school. “That’s why I have it there, as a little reminder.”
See more on McKinley's love of surfing on our Talk of the Town blog>>
