Big Night Opens Third Location on the Upper East Side

Four years after founding her “dinner party essentials” store Big Night in New York, Katherine Lewin has opened her third and biggest location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The new store, officially now open, joins the Greenpoint and West Village stores, online shop and cookbook in the Big Night brand.

“I’ve been Upper East Side curious for years,” Lewin says during a recent walk-through of the new store, located on 73rd Street and Lexington Avenue. “I think it’s so sexy and classic up here.”

Lewin opened the first store in Greenpoint in 2021 after six years at The Infatuation, leaving as its editorial director. Prior to that, she’d done merchandising and copywriting at J.Crew during the “Mickey [Drexler] and Jenna [Lyons] era.”

“When COVID-19 happened, I spent a lot of time thinking about how people were pivoting their concept of what it meant to have a special night, from restaurants to home when all we had was home,” she says. “The original intent for the store is ‘What if there was a place that inspired and empowered people to gather at home?’ That was my vision coming out of the worst of the pandemic. And I think that craving for IRL connection outside the context of a restaurant or a bar is still so strong. People are hungry for places to meet people and hang out and live outside of their own apartments, but in a space that feels connected to other people.”

Lewin opened the first Big Night location in Greenpoint in August 2021. 

“When we opened Greenpoint, I had no idea what the reaction would be. And what I found immediately was people were traveling for us, but also we were becoming a real amenity for the neighborhood. And that is so rewarding,” she says. “To see the same people over and over again and feel like you’re part of the mundane, but also the special stuff.”

Big Night sells everything you’d need for a dinner party, from flatware and vintage glasses to fancy potato chips, candles, oven mitts and the like. The Upper East Side store has an exclusive offering of dinnerware items from the Portuguese brand Valsa Home, plus Big Night’s signature candles Dinner Party and After Party, and Sabre flatware sets. The custom built bar is stocked with vintage glassware Lewin’s mother sources for the stores. The kitchen area of the store has what the team calls the Kris Jenner fridge, where the various bubbly drinks and European butters are on display.

Lewin knew she wanted to open a third store but wasn’t sure about where exactly. In March, while doing a birthday staycation at The Carlyle hotel, she walked past the space with a broker’s sign in the window and called them out of curiosity. 

“I walked in and this molding was here already, [it felt like] the classic New York apartment, and it just felt like a sign,” Lewin says. She started talks with the landlord soon after, got the space at the end of July and began customizing it. Details include a mural by Edith Young depicting typical Upper East Side scenes, Sophie Lou Jacobson wall fixtures, a custom bar that opens to have a bartender behind and a corner nook they’ve dubbed the “boyfriend corner,” a comfy place for one’s shopping companion to rest.

Big Night stands out on the home decor front thanks to its embrace of color and pattern in an often neutral and simple market. 

“People are looking for levity. And I think that was the original concept at the store — I was imagining this carnival house of color and joy,” she says. “It looks super colorful and really vibrant and unabashedly not perfect.”