Hospitality Design - November 2018 - 136

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A letter from Philippe Starck about Ian
Schrager, excerpted from Ian Schrager Works

Photo courtesy of IAN SCHRAGER COMPANY

This story is true.
I was young, very young, when I received the ﬁrst call, like an order: Get myself to New York on the next
Concorde.
It was a strange week where they placed me in different palaces every day.
Without a word. In a mystery that was complete. The last day, I received a phone call. A voice or a rasp
or a sepulchral murmur asked me if I loved it. Yes, of course. I shared some thoughts and left. A phantom had
received me in New York.
Sometime later, the phantom-less phantom, more animal, called me back. Curious, I went. That was
my mistake.
The Concorde arrived at seven in the morning. By 9 a.m., I had fallen into the trap-a cave without light,
unhealthy, somewhere. For 10 years, it was my prison. The beast waited for me, impressive, totally animal,
a predator of the highest level. A strange fact, the beast was a ventriloquist. He emitted sound without even
opening his mouth. The sound he produced, perhaps a language, was not known to the world. For 20 years,
fearful, I agreed without understanding anything. I learned later that the beast didn't understand my little cries
of distress either. Little by little, a relationship was founded on this unspoken language. What didn't help at all
was that its jaw would open just enough to swallow long days and nights worth of thin spirals of black and red
licorice. Sometimes, two or even three would be coming out of his mouth, which was all the more terrifying and
condemned all tentative communication.
The game of the beast was to ask me very precise questions. I would try to answer by sketch and
onomatopoeia in Anglo-Saxon ﬂair. The beast would listen, scrutinize, understanding with a sharpness, intuition,
and analysis never seen before. Then, he would ask the question again, the same one, in the same form, or, more
perversely, in a different form, and I would always answer three times, 20 times, certainly a couple hundred
times. Yet, at the breaking point, fascinated, I did not try to escape. The worst was when his powerful hand got
closer to the red pen hanging on his round-neck white T-shirt, [transforming into] a V-neck. The red pen struck
through, annotated, scribbled everything. The horror was the next morning when the beast, who never slept,
had with his bloodied ink stick scratched, tore, and covered frenetically the complete surface of my plans so I
couldn't recognize them anymore. One week per month, 14 hours per day, during long years, from the plane to
the cell, from the cell to my bed, to inﬁnity.
I discovered 20 years later that New York was an island with an uptown and a downtown and water
all around.
So, you ask me, why I didn't escape?
Stockholm: the syndrome of the prisoner who loves his jailer.
Yes, I loved him, and I still love him.
It is rare to see such a level of intuitive intelligence, of real brilliance. Except what I already knew,
he taught me everything. The helmet I have on my head, the leather on my back, I owe it all to him.
If today I am listened to when I speak, it is because I learned in my bones what I know, what he
taught me.
I could continue to tell you about him, but the beast doesn't require an exhaustive treatment; the beast can be
glimpsed only in the subjective.
I hope that you have caught the scent. Because be careful, the marvelous beast is still alive.
The beast watches.
To the beast.
His friend, P.S.

Hospitality Design - November 2018

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