For the past few years, a huge group of A-list celebrities has congregated in the Hamptons on the Fourth of July for Michael Rubin’s annual White Party. The soirée was originally made famous by Sean “Diddy” Combs and is now hosted by Rubin, the billionaire Fanatics CEO and former co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, at his mansion in Bridgehampton. This year, just as Combs’s sex-trafficking trial comes to a close, all those important faces may have to find somewhere else to watch the fireworks. By the looks of it, Rubin’s White Party has been called off.
Between 1998 and 2009, Combs hosted extravagant annual bashes where everyone wore white. (He attempted to resurrect the party in 2017 “for charity,” as he told Vogue, but his plans don’t seem to have gotten off the ground.) These parties were known to be full of debauchery, and celebrities have always had an unsettling habit of clamming up the second they’re asked about what goes down inside. (“I’ve got a lot I can’t tell,” Ashton Kutcher said about the parties during a 2019 Hot Ones interview.)
Rubin started throwing his own White Parties in 2021, when he bought a $50 million property in the Hamptons. As far as we know, the parties are related only in name, locale (the Hamptons), and the caliber of the guest list. Over the past three years, the KarJenners, Drake, Beyoncé, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a whole bunch of influencers have attended Rubin’s Fourth of July party, all in their brightest, tightest whites. Rubin kept the tradition up last year, even after a slew of assault allegations against Combs emerged at the tail end of 2023.
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In September, when Combs was indicted by a grand jury on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution, attention turned back toward the rapper’s original rendition of the event. The 14-page federal indictment against Combs did not mention his White Parties but did repeatedly refer to “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded,” per the indictment. Amid widespread speculation about whether Combs’s infamously rowdy parties were connected to the alleged “Freak Offs,” the White Party in particular became a major point of public interest. Combs was known to transition his White Parties into adults-only affairs later in the night — one year, he was filmed telling the crowd to “put the kids away.” One of Combs’s anonymous accusers detailed a sexual assault that he claims happened during a 2007 White Party at the East Hampton estate.
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Before Combs’s federal trial, it seems, Rubin’s parties felt sufficiently disconnected from the disgraced producer that celebrities could go on enjoying them. Last summer, the New York Times reported that 2025’s celebrations were already being planned. Now, after that 14-page indictment — and six weeks of harrowing testimony from Combs’s alleged victims — it’s looking harder to separate the two events. (On Wednesday, Combs was found not guilty on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges and faces up to 20 years for transporting people for prostitution.)
Earlier this year, the U.S. Sun declared that Rubin’s famous bash had been “canceled forever.” “The Diddy White Parties have given the theme such a bad stigma after everything that came out this past year,” a source told the tabloid. Besides these connotations, apparently, “Michael and his people thought the White Party couldn’t get any bigger than it already is, and they wanted to end it on a high note.” They added that the host was looking to focus more on charitable events.
Also supporting the theory that Rubin’s party is no more: Tom Brady. During an appearance on Logan Paul’s podcast, Impaulsive, in May, the football star was discussing his collection of expensive watches and was asked whether he would wear one to the White Party this year. Brady replied, “Michael’s not having it this year. That would be a great place to wear it.” Sounds pretty definitive to me.
