From fashion phenoms to chic restaurateurs to dance company directors, the impeccable taste and sensibility of these men make our lives simpler, prettier, happier, and richer. Today's trendsetter is Kevin Carrigan:
As creative director for Calvin Klein and ck Calvin Klein, Kevin
Carrigan oversees the brands styles of men's and women's sportswear,
denim, underwear, accessories, licensed products, and even store
designs. With $4.5 billion in licensed retail sales and over 230 shops
worldwide, that's a lot of responsibility, but Carrigan takes it on
with aplomb, approaching each season one theme at a time.
"It's extremely important for me to have one consistent message for the
season that can be applied to different areas and different regions --
one emotion with many expressions," he says. "The process evolves from
color to concept, moving from the two-dimensional to the
three-dimensional form."
Carrigan studied at London's Ravensbourne
College of Design and Communication and earned his master's degree in
fashion design at the Royal College of Art, then cut his teeth at
Nicole Farhi in France and Max Mara in Italy -- though his real taste
for fashion developed while watching his grandmother, a seamstress, at
work.
Jonathan Morr is an expert at being ahead of the curve. Years before
modern Asian noodle palaces became all the rage in Manhattan, he
launched Republic in Union Square. “When my partners and I signed the
lease there, it was way before any Barnes & Noble or Whole Foods,”
he reminisces. “That area had a lot more to do with prostitution and
drugs, but it had a beautiful park with a lot of potential… It was
quite obvious to us that there was inevitable change coming to the
area.” Likewise, before the meatpacking district was safe for the
well-washed masses, hipsters were sneaking into his APT on West 13th
Street.
He nurtured his mastery of all things cool while managing the
restaurant 44 at the Royalton Hotel in Manhattan, and the Blue Door at
the Delano Hotel in South Beach, and then used it to create the sushi
chain Bond Street and reinvent the Townhouse Hotel in Miami. His lounge
ventures include the exclusive A60 and ABH rooftop retreats atop the
Thompson Hotels in SoHo and Beverly Hills, respectively. His current
projects include a Mexico City hotel and Stand, an upscale burger chain
launched in New York City’s West Village.
Steven Durbahn has
been with Morr since his Republic days, when he was the general manager
at the constantly buzzing joint. He went on to oversee the openings of
the New York, Miami, and Beverly Hills outposts of Bond Street. He’ll
continue to manage the franchise from Los Angeles, and is already
eyeing Las Vegas for expansion.
Though George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg studied design together at
Ryerson University in Toronto, it wasn’t until a chance meeting in
later years that they decided to combine their residential and retail
design studios. The result was Yabu Pushelberg, an international firm
that specializes in combining installation artwork with interior design
for luxury brands like Prada, Tiffany & Co., Four Seasons Hotels
and Resorts, and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
They’re following up on
their latest project with Louis Vuitton (a Hong Kong store in which
shoes on conveyor belts drift past iPod bars and Martha Sturdy
furniture) with a new restaurant idea. It’s “a first for the fashion
house,” explains Yabu. “We want to bring back the romance of the
picnic, wherein the leisure class from days gone by had their Louis
Vuitton picnic trunk -- fully equipped with silver, crystal, and bone
china -- and took it on the road.”
Working together is a breeze for the
pair -- they share a pied-à-terre in one of the Richard Meier towers on
Perry Street in Manhattan, splitting their time between New York and
Toronto (their firm is the largest of its kind in Canada). Yabu focuses
on the design side, managing over 100 creative employees, while
Pushelberg toils as the friendly public face of the company.
From fashion phenoms to chic restaurateurs to dance company directors, these men's impeccable taste and sensibility make our lives simpler, prettier, happier, and richer. Today's featured trendsetter is Trey McIntyre:
Trey McIntyre grew up in Wichita, Kan., and says he has used the
straightforward American sensibility of his childhood in his work ever
since. He was only 24 in 1994, choreographing as an apprentice at the
prestigious Houston Ballet, when a New York Times critic
caught one of his works at a festival and singled him out as a face to
watch. Fourteen years later he has built up his own company from
scratch. Since 2004, McIntyre has been attracting star dancers from
across the country to work with his Trey McIntyre Project on a
part-time basis; now he will take his troupe based in Boise, Idaho, on
a 25-city international tour. “The main thing I hope to get out of
being full-time is to develop relationships with dancers that span
longer than a few weeks,” he explains. “I ask them to bring quite a bit
of themselves to the process, and that takes a lot of trust and
navigation and mentoring.” T -- CHRIS ROVZAR
Before going out on his own, Parsons graduate Derek Lam spent 12 years
working under Michael Kors, learning how to make inventive sportswear.
In 2002 he left Kors to begin his own fashion company with his business
partner, Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann, debuting his eponymous line the
following year at New York Fashion Week. Soon his dresses were in
Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman. His star has been on the rise ever since
-- he’s a favored designer of Vogue editor in chief Anna
Wintour, and he won the Perry Ellis award for most promising emerging
designer from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2005.
Schlottmann, who is also Lam’s partner in life, has been busy turning
the company from a one-line shop into a brand that includes jewelry,
shoes, and accessories.
Lam has teamed with Kiehl’s cosmetics
to design a limited-edition travel kit. As president of Kiehl’s USA
since 2005, Chris Salgardo is in charge of steering the cosmetics
company (which began in New York's East Village in 1851 and is now
distributed internationally, with stores in 23 cities nationwide) into
new territory and partnerships. Explains Salgardo of the decision to
collaborate with Lam, “Derek’s collections speak to the customer who
loves the city, loves to travel, loves the finer things in life.”
It was on a vacation to Hong Kong that University of California,
Berkeley, pals Humberto Leon and Carol Lim came up with the idea to
create Opening Ceremony, their global fashion store. Shopping abroad
was such a fun experience that Leon and Lim thought they should bring
it back to New York, opening their first SoHo boutique in 2002. The
shop showcases and sells the fashion of a different country each season
(this fall: Japan!) and has already expanded to Los Angeles.
Last year
Leon and Lim developed a line with their first house designer: indie
chick Chloë Sevigny, who will continue to design through next year and
expand into menswear. After the success of that line, Leon says he’s
open to further collaboration with “artists, musicians, maybe even
teachers.” The hallmark of Sevigny’s design is a trait that Leon
himself holds in the highest esteem: wearability. “The best way to
describe my taste is by saying that it is a culmination of all types of
practical clothing for certain purposes,” he explains. “It’s nice to
mix all these pieces so that your business dress shirt goes with your
hiking shorts.”
Before industry insiders, jurors, and the public get a chance to sift
through the remarkable selection of films at the Sundance Film
Festival, all are meticulously vetted by its director of programming,
John Cooper, and his staff. "We are all about discovery. We attack the
mountain of submissions like miners," he says. For the 2008 festival
this task involved narrowing a field of 3,624 feature-length
submissions to just 121 feature films and 32 documentaries.
Cooper, who
is celebrating the end of his second decade with the festival, is proud
of what the annual event has become. Despite criticism that it’s become
too celebrity-oriented or commercial, it is still an unparalleled
showcase for independent filmmaking and one of the world’s premier
marketplaces for new American and international work. Every year Cooper
takes care to champion gay artists, and as a result this year saw 40
LGBT-related entries, including Savage Grace, Birds of America, and the documentary about underground gay culture in Iran, Be Like Others.
From fashion phenoms to trendy restaurateurs to dance company directors, these men's impeccable taste and sensibility make our lives simpler, prettier, happier, and richer. We'll feature a new Tastemaker each day, beginning with Ducati's creative director David Gross:
When the iconic Italian motorcycle company Ducati came under new management just over a decade ago it needed a creative director who could reinvent the brand without losing any of its sense of history. Enter David Gross, a Harvard-educated corporate lawyer and marketing whiz who left New York for Bologna in 1997 to tackle the task and “to escape [his] dull NYC life.” His strategy was to change the manufacturing company (which made only a few motorcycle models and little else) into a cross-marketing machine.
A startling ad campaign featuring the rugged-looking employees of actual Ducati factories brought a new relevance to the brand. “I was in awe of the historic factory in Bologna right from the beginning. The brute gigantism of the machinery, the whirring of the paint plant, and, last but not least, the star quality of our factory workers with their dark tans and designer stubble,” he explains. “I bought a cheap camera and started taking Polaroids.” New products soon began to blossom: T-shirts with vintage Ducati logos (worn by the likes of Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom) promoted the motorcycles, which in turn promoted the designer gear necessary to complete the look -- and high-gloss boutiques brought all the elements together.
Gay men love fashion, and fashion loves gay men. Is it something in our jeans? Celebrating this long tradition, Truman Says exists to offer advice, tips, and the occasional catty observation on celebrity style coups and faux pas.
Photo: Spencer Heyfron
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