Inside Caché, an exclusive party for grown-ups

By Scott Enman

It’s the night before New York Fashion Week, and Brooklyn-based creative agency Caché Life, known for hosting some of the city’s most extravagant parties, is throwing its eighth anniversary bash at the recently opened club Nebula, in Midtown.

For the next week, designers, models and fashionistas from across the world will be descending on Manhattan and Brooklyn. Beautiful partygoers, presumably appearing on the runway in just a few days’ time, stand in the queue extending down West 41st Street waiting to enter Caché’s event.

Feel a little too old for meat market untz-untz clubs, but too young for Netflix bed death?  Like most parties, Caché books DJs, but what makes their events stand out from others is incorporating live musicians into every lineup. The artists perform solo sets or they’ll play along with the DJ’s beats. Patrons are just as likely to hear house music as they are a brass band or a Grammy-nominated saxophonist.

“I love DJs, but it was always more interesting when I threw a performer in there,” says Eric Essebag, a Bushwick resident and founder of Caché. “It doesn’t have to be an instrumentalist, it could be a singer, but it really contributes to the experience. You don’t have to overdo it for hours. You want it to be the lightning of the night and come in really hot for five to 10 minutes. That will add so much color and flavor.”

With Caché, Essebag has collaborated with Carnegie Hall and the Budapest Art Orchestra, and singer-songwriter Rod Stewart attended a party earlier this summer.

Eric Essebag plays the guitar with support from a trumpeter and saxophonist. Photo by Ross Figlerski

Essebag, who has played the guitar since he was four, attended a jazz conservatory in Budapest, before returning to America. On a budget, he moved to Philadelphia, taking a Megabus three times a week to New York City to teach guitar and make some cash.

“I was auditioning in bands, looking on Craigslist, trying to get in with the right people,” he says. “Pretty soon, I started building a big network.”

Then Caché was born. He threw his first party in 2014 at the Hudson Hotel. Unsure of what to expect, Essebag was pleasantly surprised to see the place at capacity by 1 a.m. A week later, they shut down The Mondrian.

Soon after, they secured a residency at the legendary Williamsburg nightclub Output. Since then, they’ve consistently thrown weekly parties, expanding to Dumbo, Soho and Ludlow houses, and all the biggest names in the Manhattan boutique hotel scene: Soho Grand, The Jane, The Crown.

They also threw a rare ticketed event at Harriet’s Rooftop at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge — a hard feat to do (Brooklyn Heights residents love to make noise complaints).

At a time when New York nightlife feels polarized — either underground parties in a gritty warehouse or overpriced clubs playing Top 40 — Caché bridges the gap by attracting a put-together crowd but without compromising the music.

Ruggy Joesten, head of member events for Soho House, oversees roughly 130 programs a month across three venues, and yet despite a packed calendar, he says Caché still stands out for members of the private club chain.

“They’re always a draw,” he says. “Their DJs are usually pretty good and they have some talented musicians, as well. The crowd is really fun and a lot of them eventually become members. It tickles that nightlife part without feeling like you’re at a club with hard house music. They have electronic but groovy music; it’s got soul and jazz. It hits that sweet spot.”

Inside Nebula, the room is bathed in a purple hue. Massive screens behind the booth flash trippy animations. A deep house track with diva-driven vocals blasts from the speakers, as Essebag, wearing a jacket that makes him look a little like Sgt. Pepper, strums his guitar as a trumpeter and saxophonist lend their support behind him.

He then throws his instrument down, and hops on the decks to play a few tracks.

The dancefloor is packed with young adults sipping $26 cocktails and surreptitiously smoking e-cigs. Backstage is overflowing with plus-ones and VIP guests. Over the years, Caché has attracted celebrities including LeBron James, Leonardo DiCaprio and The Backstreet Boys, among others.

Top-shelf bottles sit on ice. On one sofa, the owner of a tequila company clinks glasses with a real estate agent and his model girlfriend. Resident DJs, The Huts, a brother duo based in Williamsburg, take the reins, ripping a healthy dose of deep house and disco.

Besides the live music element, what further separates Caché from other parties is the comparatively sophisticated crowd it attracts.

The events are elegant gatherings for thirtysomethings who have moved on from the binge drinking of their 20s.

“People are attracted to it,” Essebag says. “Our parties are mostly free, but you need to be on the guest list. You need to know someone within our crew. We keep it tight. People feel sexy here. It has a very international feel, almost European. We’re in our 30s. What we’re looking for is a touch of class. We want to have meaningful conversations as opposed to just getting fucked up.”

Caché profits from alcohol and ticket sales, sponsorships and flat fees. In addition to being promoters, the company is a creative agency. Clients will hire them to throw a holiday party, for example, or a tech company unveiling a dating app, might book them to plan their launch event.

Max McDermott — ​​who works as a senior biomedical engineer for Synchron in the Brooklyn Navy Yard — has attended Caché parties since 2019 and says he’s seen the brand grow first-hand over the years, calling it a “massive groundswell.”

“It’s been a meeting point for young entrepreneurs and trendy New Yorkers for nearly a decade,” he says. “It’s gotten huge: like the amount of people going, the music, the quality of the venues. All the production, artists, everything has blown up in that time period exponentially, but it’s also stayed true to what it originally started off as, which was New York talent with a formal, classy New York flare.”

Caché’s next parties are on Saturday at Daphne and on Oct. 22 at Soho House.