Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra Irish fashion designer found dead at Montauk Yacht Club amid party lifestyle as social media celebrated her luxury life while masking her double life.
An Irish fashion designer who was found dead on a yacht in the Hamptons lived a jet-setting life of luxury with her glamorous friendss. But despite social media posts showcasing an exuberant lifestyle, the reality was a far more sobering one, including living in a modest studio in Manhattan.
Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra, 33, was discovered unconscious onboard a vessel named ‘Ripple’ while it was docked at the Montauk Yacht Club around midnight Tuesday.
Manhattan designer Montauk death eyed as accidental cocaine drug overdose
Irish fashion designer celebrated luxury jetset lifestyle
Good Samaritans attempted life saving measures, but East Hampton Town Police pronounced her dead at the scene. Her manner of death remains unclear and will be determined by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Irish-born Nolan-O’Slatarra, founder of fashion label East x East, created a ritzy lifestyle for herself that’s often associated with Manhattan’s elite and that she eagerly shared on social media.
The self-professed entrepreneur and brand growth consultant took rides on helicopters and private jets, videos posted on her TikTok account reveal.
In one post, the fashion designer and her pals took a Falcon jet to Nashville for a concert in 2021 with Nolan-O’Slatarra highlighting her ‘#milehighclub’ and ‘#privatejet’ life in the captions.
Last October, she shared a video of herself and a male companion drinking champagne as they flew over a sunny, rural looking area. She captioned the short clip: ‘Heli on up.’
Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra autopsy inconclusive, designer was partying day before death
Hamptons socialite lived in studio in UES
Nolan-O’Slattara shared a TikTok clip of herself with the same man sitting in a luxurious convertible car as it drove through picturesque countryside. It remained unclear if he was the same man since described as her boyfriend that discovered her unconscious Monday midnight.
Privately, Nolan-O’Slattara’s lifestyle was not all glitz and glamor.
In an interview with the Irish Independent last year, she claimed to ‘live in the Upper East Side’ which she said she ‘loved’ even though it was ‘expensive’.
But property records tie her to an address in Yorkville, which is often regarded as a less desirable and more inexpensive part of the the highly sought out UES neighborhood.
Nolan-O’Slatarra lived in a small studio apartment where her monthly rent was approximately $1,900, records cited by the dailymail revealed.
‘Small town girl who needed to achieve big dreams’
She grew up in the small town of Carlow, Ireland, roughly 55 miles outside of capital city Dublin.
She left home at 16 after she ‘forced’ her parents to send her to the highly regarded Institute of Education in Dublin, a private secondary school where an education will set families back about $67,540 (€58,200).
‘I was the small town girl who needed to get out to achieve her big dreams,’ Nolan-O’Slatarra told the Irish Independent, highlighting how she was ‘money driven’, ‘business driven’ and ‘always knew I wanted to be successful’.
After secondary school, she attended University College Dublin where she studied the fundamentals of business as an undergraduate and later earned a master’s degree in digital marketing.
Once she completed her degrees, Nolan-O’Slatarra interviewed for graduate scheme positions at major companies, including Deloitte and Ernst & Young, but said she was told it would be nine months before she would be informed of a hiring decision.
The entrepreneur was looking for a ‘change’ in the interim and ended up in the US in 2015 after her dad bought her a one-way ticket to New York City, the newspaper reports.
Although she only intended to be in the city for nine months, Nolan-O’Slatarra got a job at fintech start-up Street Diligence, a company that worked with what she described as ‘top-tier hedge funds’.
She claimed the firm’s CEO offered to pursue visa sponsorship after she successfully landed investment bank Jefferies as a client.
She left Street Diligence after two years, bouncing around at multiple companies before starting her firm Brand Growth Consultants – which has an online presence that appears to be completely AI-generated – in 2021.
She launched several companies that same year, including her direct-to-consumer Amazon brand Duper and her resort wear line East x East, her LinkedIn page reveals.
Irish fashion designer double life
East x East had a brand shoot in Mallorca, Spain in 2023. Just weeks ago, Nolan-O’Slatarra celebrated the grand opening of the brand’s popup shop at Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa.
‘Goals Achieved,’ she wrote on a video shared of the shack housing her bikinis and beach wear shared on TikTok on July 1 as she encouraged the public to come visit.
But while she may have been meeting milestones, her personal life may have been mired in abuse and excess.
A regular at the Yacht Club claimed Nolan-O’Slatarra’s boyfriend owning the boat where she was found deceased and that whenever she saw the boat owner he would be ‘drunk and always messed up.’
According to the local, the boat owner was seen running outside without any clothes screaming ‘that’s my girlfriend’ as he tried to get help from other boaters.
It remained unclear whether Nolan-O’Slatarra may have been using narcotics or prescriptions and possibly overdosed.
The Montauk Yacht club offers those beach-goers luxurious accommodations, including spa services, a pool, beach, harbor cruises, biking and yoga.
Rooms at the famed club run for about $1,500 in the summertime and around $865 during other months.
Meanwhile, Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad detectives continue to investigate, with authorities asking anyone with information to contact the squad at 631.852.6392.
