How Good Design Saved a Former Fashionista & Gave Him Shelter
As a fashion model based in Milan, then Paris, I was inspired by the foreign new world around me. Nothing like the small North Carolina college town I’d left behind, I worked for great fashion houses like Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Saint Laurent & Valentino. I found myself at the center of European fashion as if in some incredible dream. Immersed for a decade in its racing heart, I was exposed to the tastes & eccentricities of people far richer & more acquainted to the pursuit of design & beauty than myself.
But the doodles on the edges of my client go-sees were not fashion. Dresses & suits didn’t inspire me. I sketched chairs, lamps & vases. That a chair could be designed was a new idea to me. Rennie Mackintosh’s high backed chair, which raced like a ladder to the sky, was like an explosion in my mind. How could something designed in 1902 be so new?
Hill House Chair
In 1986 or ‘87 (how strange that entire years now are blurs), I had my epiphany. I had still to complete my Christmas shopping. Quickly. My flight back to the States was the following day. I had yet to find one last perfect gift. It was cold, raining, and miserable. The streets of Milan were cobblestone, beautiful if difficult to navigate. It was getting dark. Then suddenly, in the shop window of the Via Whatever, there is was: Michael Graves’ iconic Kettle with Bird Whistle.
Kettle with Bird Whistle
9093, his shiny stainless steel kettle for Alessi, caused my pulse to quicken, my skin to prickle. Something as simple & essential to our daily lives as a kettle to boil water, yet as modern & perfect as this. There it was, my last, perfect gift.
And that, my friends, is how it all began…
