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| , the legendary designer and hotelier, tells Bill Millard how he keeps his finger on the zeitgeist. interview the King of

an Schrager entered his office in an upbeat mood. Part of the reason for his high energy level became apparent when his mobile phone rang halfway through the conversation: it was his Inew wife, former ballerina Tania Wahlstedt. Post-workout adrenaline may have added to the post-honeymoon exhilaration. But a look around his work space made it clear that Schrager’s intensity is habitual. Schrager’s own office features a long wall with photos, diagrams, floor plans, press clippings and other working documents. Some CEOs make personal museums of their offices, covering shelf space with trophies and walls with photos of themselves in eminent company. This room is a working space, not a monument to an ego but a place to get things done. Its occupant clearly spends a lot more time living in the present and the future than on Memory Lane. No one with even the haziest knowledge of Schrager’s colorful history would expect his office to feature prominent reminders of an abandoned project. As a tastemaker and zeitgeist-surfer who has transformed two entire industries, he is consistently identified with what’s around the next bend, not what’s been left behind. Yet a set of monuments sit across from his desk; not just one version but multiple iterations, positioned where his eyes can’t help but land several times a day. Models of ’s unbuilt Astor Place hotel remind Schrager of one revolution he didn’t quite pull off. With the shadow of September 11 darkening the New York hotel business, the project collapsed for a variety of reasons: timing, personalities and finances. The site ended up getting a conservative mirror-glass condo tower by , lucrative for the landowner but largely unloved. Schrager’s regret over the Astor Place hotel is palpable. ‘I would love to have done that project,’ he says. ‘It was way ahead of its time.’ Asked about the design’s site-specificity, however, and the chance that something like it might eventually be realised elsewhere, he brightens instantly. ‘Sure!’ he says. His reaction to the Astor Place experience is Schrager in a nutshell: intensely emotional, driven, improvisatory, and above all, resiliently optimistic. Schrager’s optimism is nothing like naiveté. He is well aware of the gap opening up between the crashing economy and the market for four-star destination hotels. But he views the transition from a derivative-fueled gilded age to a broadly accessible Apple/Ikea/Muji aesthetic as just another field of opportunity. He’d take on the challenge of redefining one- or two-star lodging in a New York minute. ‘I love the idea! Who says that great style and great design have to be reserved for rich people?’

An instinct for the big rethink Schrager has endured experiences that would drive many men into a cowed, cautious existence. His most famous early venture, the dance club, co-founded with University friend

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Schrager relaxes at his office.

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