Gay

ANGELO AND I

The Laurens' Fifth Avenue Apartment by Angelo Donghia, c. 1980

The Laurens’ Fifth Avenue Apartment by Angelo Donghia, c. 1980

Angelo Donghia died in NYC April 12,1985. I was still at Parsons studying Graphic Design and not aware of his unprecedented success as an interior designer and business man. Or of the figure he cut though Manhattan society from Studio 54 to the Metropolitan Opera Club.
But decades after his death he seems to be “haunting” me in the best possible way. First came “Angelo Donghia: Design Superstar,” a retrospective at the New York School of Interior Design in the Fall of 2015. The venue limited the scope of the exhibition, but it gave me a glimpse of Donghia’s Fifth Avenue duplex for Ralph and Ricky Lauren. More Tribeca [before Tribeca was Tribeca] than Upper East Side, it was low-slung, white and spare – no molding, no art, just overstuffed white furniture and unadorned white walls as far as the eye could see.
Not long after, I was talking to a friend, Liz Youngling, who’s career has included stints in fashion and as an interior designer. Having attended meetings in that gorgeous apartment when she worked for Ralph Lauren, she could confirm it was even more spectacular in person. Recently via email, Liz also remembered, “Angelo used to come to our office quite a bit to see Ralph and he was the most elegant man! So well-dressed, handsome, and kind to all of us peons. I’ll never forget being around him the little bit that I was – not many men like that anymore.” Certainly something to aspire to.

Angelo Donghia and unamed friends in NYC

Angelo Donghia and unamed friends in NYC

I read more and learned that the Donghia studio’s signature included silver-foil ceilings, lacquered walls, bleached floors and oversize upholstered furniture. His use of grey flannel, a reference to his family’s tailoring business, prompted the moniker, “the man in the gray flannel sofa.” And his business acumen led him to produce furniture, textiles and wallcoverings for the design trade, and he licensed his designs for sheets, towels, china, glassware and giftware produced for the general public, to great success unheard of for an interior designer of the day.

A vignette in the Donghia Dallas showroom featuring vintage books, ceramics and silver from my inventory.

A vignette in the Donghia Dallas showroom featuring vintage books, ceramics and silver from my inventory.

Today, Donghia, Inc., operates twelve showrooms across the United States with collections including textiles, wallcoverings, case pieces, accessories and upholstery. The Dallas showroom is helmed by the dynamic Jessica Craig. I was introduced to Jessica by my dear friend, interior designer Alice Cottrell, with an eye toward making advertising industry connections. A second meeting clarified two things for both of us: my dream job wasn’t in advertising, but in selling beautiful objects, books and art; and Jessica and I could work together.

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with Jessica and the Donghia Dallas showroom, providing thoughtfully chosen books, ceramics and silver accessories. I hope to bring even a bit of Angelo Donghia’s wit and flair to the showroom’s already smart décor. And I hope he would approve.

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A MOVING STORY

Dallas bound

Dallas bound


I moved from Houston, where I grew up, to New York in August of 1983, ostensibly to attend Parsons School of Design, but really to become the person I was meant to be – creative, sophisticated, artistic, chic and ultimately open and honest about who I was in all areas of my life. New York did the trick – it was everything I had hoped for and so much more.
In June of 1995, I moved to London to get away from both a contretemps at the ad agency I worked for and my best friend’s gruesome lingering death from AIDS. London was a great distraction. It was all familiar, but all a little different. A New York with more age and more green space, London in the mid 90s was THE center of design, theatre, pop music and culture in the world. It was so much fun to be a part of it all for a few years.
In June of 1997, I returned to New York – the ad agency having closed the London office. I settled in for an increasingly unhappy few years. Nothing was doing the trick anymore. Not the job, not relationships (such as they were), not even the things I loved – art, theatre, fashion. I resorted to what had worked for me in the distant past to change the way I felt. It worked until it didn’t.
In the last days of 2001, my father scraped me up off the floor of my apartment near Madison Square Park and took me back with him to Houston. I did recover from what ailed me [and continue to] but I was horrified to be back where I started. The place I had run from. Feeling I had little choice, I made the best of it. I opened an ad agency in Houston with a terrific business partner and made a good life. I had close friends. Dated. Traveled. Bought and sold beautiful homes. Made my peace with not being in New York and returned 3 or 4 times a year.
The agency was great for 11 out of the 13 years we were open. The last year was not one of them. We closed the doors in March of this year. I sold my apartment in February, and a few months later, moved into the garage apartment of a friend’s home in Broadacres, a leafy inner loop neighborhood in Houston. I began to look for employment and talk to everyone who would speak to me. It was a terrific experience. The universe met me more than halfway by bringing me a lot of lovely, smart, creative, and to a fault, generous, people. What I didn’t find was a job in Marketing or Advertising. Free of the agency and real estate [and, sadly, my lovely 17-year old American Eskimo dog Holly, who had passed away at the end of 2016], the universe seemed to be telling me that I could be free of my career as well, something I hadn’t really considered.
As I continued to look for a job in my “chosen” field, I began to consider what I might really choose. I’ve collected architect and artist designed objects, fashion collaborations, art and photography, and books on all of it for decades. It’s what I love. I love the stories behind the objects and artworks – the designers and artists, the makers and marketers, and how these works fit into the whole of their output and the world. Inspired by an article about a gentleman who sells design objects from his home in Brooklyn, I started to talk to people about creating such an endeavor myself. The response was overwhelmingly positive – a chorus of “it’s very you.”
At the end of this week, I’m moving to Dallas to pursue my new business there, perhaps along with an advertising or creative gig – I’m open to whatever the universe brings. A full 34 years after I first left “home,” I’m leaving again to strive to be even more of the person I am, without apology or obligation. There is a pretty good chunk of risk involved, but I have a lot of love and support including that of a lifelong friend, a sister really. And at this stage, “success” is whatever comes next, as long as I let the universe move me.

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Early Yesterday

Jack Early's Man Boobs, 2014

Jack Early’s Man Boobs, 2014


I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to see and then learn more about artist Jack Early and his work, part of Bill Arning’s terrific “A Better Yesterday” at CAMH. Early grew up gay and creative in the south of the 1970s just as I did. The tightly cropped hypermasculine 1970s dude chest of “Man Boobs” (2014) – and the other 2 paintings in the show – all live on a background of toy soldier wallpaper – the kind typical in the boys’ bedrooms of my childhood. I felt the tension in the picture even before I heard Early say in his recorded “Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes” (2014), also in the show, “I was a gay eight-year-old in 1970. I would have chosen flowers or a circus theme, but it wasn’t lost on me that choosing soldiers would lend some air of masculinity.” He abandoned himself to pass in a world that told him it was dangerous to be him. I abandoned myself to stay safe. We all did.

Jack Early’s work is exactly what I was missing in The Speed Art Museum’s “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art.” [see my earlier blog post, Due South.]

I could tell you more about Jack Early’s life and career, but he does it best in:
Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes!

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One Night Only

Kevyn Aucoin transformed me into a 1950s Maria Callas-like siren.

Kevyn Aucoin transformed me into a 1950s Maria Callas-like siren.

One evening in 1994, I went to dinner with my then boyfriend Ken, my friend from Charavari, Donald Reuter [who by that time was working for Mr. Beene], and his boyfriend, the makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin. We went to see one of the Terminator movies, grabbed pizza and went on to Kevin’s amazing little 2-story house complete with front garden in the rear yard of a building on the edge of Soho/Little Italy. Kevyn asked if he could do my make up and I said yes, of course. Kevyn was already “famous” by pre-internet or social media standards and spent much of his working life with the likes of Naomi, Cindy, Whitney and Dolly. Though he would be remembered for his approach to individual, “natural” beauty, he was a master of transformational makeup, turning Isabella Rossalini into Baraba Streisand and Gwyneth Paltrow into James Dean among many others. So I was to be a mid-century Italian bombshell a la Maria Callas. Arched eyebrows, reshaped features, full lips and a beauty mark. Dark wig in place and the transformation was complete. I was still in the white t-shirt, jeans and boots I had been wearing that evening out. We admired his handiwork, Kevyn took polaroids and then he took it all off.

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