If you plan on visiting Sir Ivan Wilzig’s famed castle in the Hamptons, leave your bikini top at home.
The protocol for Sunday afternoons is topless sunbathing. If that’s not your thing, “Ivan would say, ‘It’s a topless swim party. Come back another time,'” his brother Alan Wilzig told The Post. “Of course, Ivan is a libertine.”
For years, Sir Ivan’s 15,000-square foot mansion, built to look like a medieval-style castle, in Water Mill was notorious as a late-night party pad where, one female guest told The Post, “the later you stayed, the more loose people would get.” Hamptons lore includes tales of, as one former regular put it, “skinny dipping and hot tub sex”— and a mysterious dungeon.
Ivan, a musician who sometimes performs at the bashes, is notorious for wearing Liberace-esque capes or, according to the former regular, “a see-through caftan and a thong.”
Those fabled late-night parties are mostly a thing of the past. “They ended around 2017,” Alan said. “Now, it’s Sunday afternoon barbecues before people head back to the city.” But a new lawsuit has dredged up the past.
A woman named Kate Whiteman filed a civil lawsuit in March, claiming that, in 2012, she was “sexually assaulted, abused, raped, pinned, groped, harassed, battered and fondled by defendants Alon and Oren” Alexander — identical twins who often partied at Ivan’s castle.
Oren was a prominent figure in the real-estate firm Official and Alon is a private security firm executive.
While Ivan is named in the suit for reputed negligence, he is in no way implicated in the assault and rape allegations.
Whiteman claims that she was taken by the brothers, against her will, to the castle and attacked in a bedroom used by the twins.
Oren Alexander declined to comment for this story, and the Alexander brothers’ lawyer did not return a call for comment.
On Monday, their lawyer Jim Ferraro told The Post in a statement: “This suit was brought public after [the Alexanders] chose not to give in to a demand in the tens of millions of dollars. We are confident this matter will be resolved in [their] favor given an extensive collection of powerful evidence including, phone records, text messages, emails and other documents whose content clearly debunks these claims.”
The allegations have cast a dark shadow on what was long known as a pleasure palace.
“The whole point is for it to feel sexy, glamorous, fun, risqué. If you were there with your wife or girlfriend on a Saturday night, you might find a place to make out,” said Alan of the home he and his brother built. (Alan sold his share of the place, to Ivan, 58, in 2004.) “A couple feels like they are in the Garden of Eden when they are there.”
A source told The Post of the parties, “[As a man], you’d have to have a girl with you. You get to the house, everyone had to take your clothes off and put this sarong thing on that Ivan has. You go in the pool and then he says it’s time to go inside and you get naked and you put your stuff in lockers. Ivan will be like, ‘Chop, chop, everyone has to take their sarongs off. Chop chop!'”
Ivan did not return calls for this story.
But Alan said of such memories: “A lot is hype. People will sensationalize. You come over and two girls are tanning topless and, if someone wants to be an idiot about it, they say everyone is running around naked.
“I once read that [Ivan] has the lockers and every guest has to put their clothes in a locker and go nude or wear a sarong. Do the lockers exist? Yes. Are they big enough for your clothes? No. They are for cell phones and valuables. My brother did not want to hear a word of somebody having a handbag or cell phone missing when there are 30 people there. That is a complete buzzkill.”
The source also told The Post that Ivan “has a dungeon next to his garage and he has a bed with handcuffs. It looks like an S&M dungeon.”
In a 2011 interview with The Post, Ivan said the dungeon was “inspired by my decorators, Caligula and the Marquis de Sade” and decorated with “gold leaf, granite and marble.”
He added that the space has three purposes: “It’s a dungeon for historical accuracy that makes the Castle a castle. It’s a changing area and cabana for the pool. And it’s an eight-car garage.”
As for it being a “sex dungeon,” Alan said, “It’s a strict rule that nobody ever screws in that room.” He said that Ivan once told him, “The last thing I want to hear is that I have a sex dungeon.”
One past party attendee recalled an event in 2012 where “people were definitely trying to sneak around the house to find the famed ‘sex room’ … [but] security was around to make sure you didn’t enter certain rooms.”
Built for entertaining, the castle features a 25′-x-25′-foot mirrored disco, eight bedrooms, a game room and a nightclub-worthy sound system. Outside stands a statue that Ivan once described to The Post as “half nude and half dragon” and was inspired by his close friend Mina Otsuka.
“Ivan does not decorate with golf umbrellas. He decorates with bronze cauldrons that look like flaming pots of oil,” Alan told The Post. “My old suite there had more than a dozen windows. Back in the early 2000s, I’d get up in the middle of the night … and there was always someone naked in the pool. But not in a bad way. Look, we don’t sit home and knit.”
A regular from back in the day recalled that “the castle was a place for sex. Everyone knew that. The brothers are very open about their lifestyles. I’ve been there many times. I have never had sex there and was never coerced to do so. The brothers are very good guys.
“Ivan has wonderful, tacky taste,” the regular added. “It was an open air place for free love and positive vibes.”
The past party attendee described the castle as “more like a Disney-type thing. The year I went there were carousel rides and there was a jungle theme based on Ivan’s techno song ‘La La Land.’ Everyone was dressed up. Ivan was walking around greeting guests in a sparkly outfit and a cape. He always wears a cape because his alter ego is Peace Man. The food situation was odd. Just so much pastrami, like giant tray after giant tray. There must have been $50,000 worth of sliced meat.”
The Wilzig brothers could certainly afford it. They came into a fortune via their father, Siggy. He survived the Holocaust, came to America penniless and made millions in oil and banking. Following his death in 2003, Alan engineered a sale of the family’s Trust Company bank in New Jersey for $765 million.
Ivan and Alan worked for the bank when they were building their castle on a five-acre plot of land purchased for less than $1 million in 1995. But after the castle’s completion in ’97, its reputation — which Alan says was unfounded — “freaked out” everyone at the bank, “and my brother and I got locked out of the office.”
One insider told The Post on Tuesday that there are no plans for any more “bacchanals.”
“Ivan is unhappy and nervous about the lawsuit that names his castle as the scene of the rape,” the insider said, adding: “There has been zero chatter that Ivan was involved.”
