Issue 10
Philippe Starck
By Justine Suzanne JonesPortrait By Dan Monick
Illustration By Travis Stearns
A born and bred Parisian, Philippe Starck, who has been accused by more than a few commentators of being the “world’s most famous designer,” announces that he is “a little sleepy because of cocktails yesterday. A little jet lag, a little work and the cocktails— and perhaps too much sex.”
Uncomfortably hemmed by two handlers and a girl holding a tape recorder, Starck seems restless at the prospect of rehashing his restlessly diverse career for yet another breathless profile. He has designed juicers and motorcycles, presidential drawing rooms, beer headquarters, toilet brushes, inflatable chairs and industrial incinerators. And he has been under scrutiny from admirers and critics alike ever since he splashed on the scene designing the interiors of provocative Paris nightclubs in the 1970s, following a stint as art director of the Pierre Cardin fashion house.
Still, he negotiates the territory between aloof and responsive with equal parts benevolence and beguilement. Starck appears to relish his ability to playfully misdirect by telling a certain version of the truth. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who Starck references more than once, might have something to say about this manner. And for a man who says he holds more faith in humans than in god, Starck has a healthy—and charming—dose of misanthropy.
Why, 20 years into your career, do you continue to work on restaurants and hotels when you have complete professional freedom?
Because I have a lot of things to say. When you make a hotel or restaurant, you experience directly. For the hotel, if I separate out the functionality, it’s a place where I have nothing to say but “Live it. Feel it.” And perhaps you will see, after three hours in a bar, three days in a hotel, that you feel different—more awake—and that these places are machines to produce a fertile surprise. [People] can see that everything is possible. We can invent everything. And when they come home they can say to their wife: “I was in this hotel in Los Angeles, and I cannot tell you if it was chic, trendy, beautiful or not—and that’s not important. But this place was so full of new ideas, of mental games, of tricks and creativity that gave me so much energy. I want to work on my life, I want to invent my life, my society, my civilization.” It’s that. It’s a wake-up machine. With my own work, my fantasy, my intuition, my inspiration, there is always something new to say. There is always a new story to tell. That’s why I continue. When I have no more stories to tell, I shall stop—because it is very complicated, my God, to make a hotel!
You’ve already threatened to quit many times over.
Heh.
Aren’t there new social spaces that are the milieu of the middle class that need to be addressed—beyond the hotels and restaurants?
Oh, definitely yes. The two best social places today are the public library and the sports club. They are the best! These are a lot more the places to pick up girls than the nightclub and the restaurant! That’s why there are so many things to invent.
Why did you choose to strike up a design partnership with another powerful personality in the hotel and restaurant business, Sam Nazarian, just as noncompetition clauses established in your previous partnership with Ian Schrager are beginning to dissolve?
First, we must remember that design is absolutely useless. It’s absolutely not a priority, absolutely not important. The only final goal for design is to try to bring a better life to your friends. To try to give five minutes of pleasure, of happiness—to try to make people more sparkling, more creative, more awake, more in love, smarter, more elegant. I need people fast and intelligent to understand new, sophisticated concepts. I need open people to accept new concepts. Sam Nazarian is exactly the partner I dream to have a revolution with one more time, 20 years into the hotel business and nightclubbing and restaurant businesses. He’s the guy. He’s the right player. He’s the best player.
So you’ve enmeshed yourself in another long-term relationship. Don’t you miss the quick, high impact, one-off commissions with which you began your career?
My contract with Sam is only hotels and restaurants in North America and the Caribbean. And I’m very happy of that. Because Sam invests and takes a lot of risks for me, I think it is very normal to give him this exclusivity. And I love him. It’s like you—if you like a man and want to get married and have beautiful children. Me, yes, I am monogamous. But it’s just North America and the Caribbean. It is not all the world. I will continue to have and make other projects in Asia, in Europe—everywhere.
You’ve created a public persona that’s a little oblique, contrary and contradictory. Has that in any way facilitated an open-ended reception of your work?
I am sorry? I have not created a persona. Me, I have strictly nothing to say. There is a French philosopher named Lacan who said, “le dit tuer.” That means that when you say something, you kill what you say. For me, when I speak, it kills what I dream. That’s why I avoid speaking. That I answer [your questions] is because a long time ago I received a good education. But I have no special desire to speak. I try to protect my own magma! You haven’t contributed to it at all, then? No, absolutely not. No, you journalists, you need to speak about people. And you create the persona. Me, I am absolutely out of all that. Today, you ask me to speak. I didn’t ask to be in your magazine. Me, I live far away from everything. I live in hidden, small places. A small island in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the forest, the middle of the mud—without electricity, without cars, without water. And that is why nobody can tell me that I’ve created a persona. I’m just polite. When somebody asks me something, I answer. I work. I am a worker. I work at five o’clock in the morning. Almost every day I take a plane, my plane. It’s comfortable. Or I wake up at seven o’clock to draw, to create. That’s why, thank you very much, to have created the persona, this public image called “Starck”—no. It’s you who needs the image, not me.
Despite all of this, you are very socially engaged.
Politically! I am very politically engaged. Yes, absolutely, all my work is political. You can read the book I made for this big exhibition with the [Centre] Pompidou where I explain object by object the reason why this toothbrush is like this, why this chair is like that. All the reasons are purely political because in life everything is political. A journalist can make a revolution with one article. A politician can make a revolution with one law. A singer can make a revolution with one song. Me, a designer, it’s an entire life to try to express something. Because to try to speak with a toilet brush—it’s not so easy. Because I’m purely masochistic, I continue to use this stupid work, which is called design, which is sticky, heavy and mute. But it’s my job. And I’m too lazy to change now. I should try to change, but later. Still, you see that everything I have done, it was purely political. [There are] different reasons: speaking about sex, speaking about directly political things, speaking about ecology, speaking about education, speaking about money. Thinking about a lot of things, but it’s political, yes.
Of all of these non-design issues that subtend your various projects, which do you think is most critical or apparent across your body of work?
I think you speak about the Good Goods catalogue—a mail order catalogue that was directly political. The “Gun” collection was directly political. But perhaps, finally, my most political product was my organic rice. Just to say to my friends: “Eat well, because if you eat well you will be in better health. Your body will work better, your brain will work better. You will be more intelligent and more able to love and to imagine.” That is perhaps my best political product.
But not the organic Champagne?
Ah, oh yes, I agree with you. That’s the most well-balanced product. You know well! But finally my biggest, most political action was democratic design—to try and kill elitism in design, to try to bring the best to the maximum number of people. Raise the quality! Down the price! That was a real, big war. A fight. Finally, I almost [succeeded] after 20 years. When I started design, my first success was the Café Costes chair. And we can say that cost $1000. Everyone was so happy. Big success, big royalties and things like that. But I said, “It’s an obscenity!” For a family to sit with their children, they must pay $6000! It’s ridiculous. Plus a table? $10,000 to eat with your children or your friends! Ridiculous! I think that cannot be modern. It’s so old. That’s why I fight to make the first plastic chair. Finally, somebody [agreed] to do it—and we can say it was $600. We killed the market. And immediately the competitor arrived and said, “Gasp! Make me one!” I said, “Yes!” And I invented a trap, a sort of black hole like that. And then the [chair] after that was perhaps $400. Killed the market. Then the others come back and are like, “Make me one instead!” And then $300, $200, $100, $80, $60, $40. Two years ago with Target it was $9! When you take out three zeros, you change the concept.
That last chair is cheaper than your toilet brush.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. That’s why changing the concept even kills the word “design” when you have a product of fantastic quality. Today the [Louis] Ghost Chair is one-fifth cheaper than the Café Costes chair and 20 times better quality. That was my work, and I am proud of that.
What about your product line of inexpensive, non-branded, everyday items for 7-11 of Japan? Why hasn’t something similar been done in the United States?
Because Japanese people are more sophisticated. And with Target, it was a little difficult to make the perfect product because the buyers had ideas that lowered the creativity. With 7-11 Tokyo, it was not the same thing. The buyers had a higher quality culturally. So that’s why it was easier to work, definitely.
Do you think American taste is migrating toward that level of sophistication?
Ah, well, no. Everybody has his own qualities and shortcomings, his own territory of talent. Design is back in the U.S., but it’s very, very recent. It’s growing right now. But the strange thing is that this modern country has had no design since Charles Eames in 1952. Can you imagine? There is not an American designer! And there are no customers for design. That’s changed, but it’s this year. It’s astonishing.
Do you see any relationship between your own, as you’ve described it, “tribe” and the family cultivated by Charles and Ray Eames?
Oh, you know, darling, I have no relationship with anything. I am a lonely boy, a lonely worker. Sadly, I work alone, I dream alone, I think alone. I don’t sleep alone—ha!—and that’s all. I’m not a designer, but I love these people. The design of Charles Eames is the design. And yet you have many wonderful people to support you, no? Oh, definitely. I am a product produced by women. I’m a remote control, a toy driven by women. I am nothing else but the result of women. I am not a specialist of one matter. I am a little specialist of high technology, perhaps plastic, because I love plastic. First for ecological reasons, because the more you use plastic in an intelligent and ethical way, the less often you kill animals to have the leather, the less often you kill trees to have wood. That’s why, when it’s well done, synthetic products are more ecological and philosophically interesting than “natural” products. Our civilization is based on intelligence. The thing that makes a difference between animals and ourselves is the concept of love and the concept of intelligence. Me, I have only one passion in my life—human intelligence. I am a fan of human intelligence. I have admiration every day when somebody finds a new invention, a new I don’t know what. Even if it’s stealing money from the cash machine—as long as they are so inventive. We did not invent the wood. We did not invent the stone. We did not invent the animals. Nobody invented them. Life invented them. We have invented—with our brain, with our intelligence—plastic. And the way to use it. Today, synthetic materials and plastic are more competent, more intelligent than natural materials. That’s why our civilization has become modern. Rich. The target is to become God. We produce products better than what some people imagine was created by God! That’s why I don’t believe in God. I believe more in humans and in synthetic materials. Some years ago, I was in my oyster farm in the southwest of France, in the middle of the mud, rowing in my kayak. I thought this material is very good, very strong and very cheap! A kayak is $300. And it’s the size of a sofa! When I came back home, I looked at the name on the kayak, and I called the company and said, “Tell me, that is two meters—seven feet. You think we can make a sofa like that?” They said, “Ooh, non.” But I said, “It’s the same thing!” They said, “Perhaps we can try?” And I said, “Okay, we try.” And I designed a sofa in blow molding, like a kayak. And we have killed the price one more time because of blow molding! That is the thing that I love—to create a revolution in furniture because it’s my job. And there are a lot—a lot—of things like that. I am a specialist of that.
What area of the world do you think is becoming the most critical staging ground for innovation and creativity in design?
There are different kinds of creativity. There is science; there is art; there is philosophy—there are different things. Yes, I think it is logical to say that certain creativity will continue to come from Europe, and the challenger, but not in the same way, is Asia. That means Japan, still. Also China. And India. India will give us lots of big surprises.