FROM DISCO BALLS to HOTEL LOBBIES the Mastermind Behind Some of the World’S Most Modern Hotels on His Style Evolution
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inbrief ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE Ian Schrager in his well-appointed home office in Manhattan FROM DISCO BALLS TO HOTEL LOBBIES The mastermind behind some of the world’s most modern hotels on his style evolution AN SCHRAGER is in the midst of another hot streak of hotel But the hotelier wasn’t always so self-assured. The turn- openings. The second of his EDITION hotels, a collabora- ing point, he says, came when he renovated New York’s Ition with Marriott International, opened in London last Gramercy Park Hotel with the artist Julian Schnabel in September, and Miami Beach EDITION will debut this 2006. “I went off in a new direction when I worked with fall. Schrager described the London outpost to Rhapsody Julian,” Schrager says. “We did something more decorative as “sophisticated, in warm palettes of dusty rose, khaki and ornate than we’d ever done before, and no one expected and mustard, and elegantly furnished with eclectic pieces that from us. I was rejecting and moving on from everything inspired by Salvador Dalí and Donald Judd.” else in the past.” It’s no fluke that Schrager finds himself at the top of the While Schrager admits that the Gramercy wasn’t his hotel game, as he’s been at it for some time. The native New personal style—it was a bit too baroque, quirky, eclectic Yorker started the legendary Manhattan nightclub Studio and edgy—he was nevertheless breaking new ground. Fol- 54 with his friend Steve Rubell in 1977, and in the 1980s lowing this “intellectual exercise,” as he puts it, he returned he brought the glitz and glamour of his disco days to the to a more natural, pared-down style when he began work creation of Morgans, which many acknowledge as the first on PUBLIC Chicago, as part of his own brand, and the boutique hotel. EDITION series, whose first outpost opened in 2011 in For Schrager, good taste is about “how something feels, Istanbul. And in doing so, he returned to his roots. “I re- if it has magic and is something special,” he says. “I don’t ally jettisoned everything that wasn’t simple and pure—no have to be overzealous because I’m confident about what I tricks and void of artifice,” he says. “Just good old-fashioned like. If I wasn’t, I would hang it up.” taste.” —JULIE EARLE-LEVINE BRIANSHUMWAY — february 2014 R1_RHAP0214_026_IB_Hotelier.indd 26 14/01/2014 10:12.