A bit late

longformorg:

A profile of fashion designer Roberto Cavalli.

It’s 11 a.m. Cavalli has just risen from his wolf-fur-covered bed and said good morning to Boy, his tiger-striped Bengal cat, and Gino, his miniature monkey. At a breakfast table covered with a cloth of one of his swirling bird patterns, on which are placed four packs of cigarettes and two cigars, Cavalli sinks down on a leopard-print cushion. While he eats applesauce and drinks orange juice from Cavalli tableware, he is surrounded by his four parrots and three beautiful publicists.

“Give me some bad questions,” he tells me, lighting a cigar. “I will try to be nice.”

Mark Seal | Vanity Fair | Aug 2009

Why are fashion designer profile always so much better than industrial designer profiles? Are they just that much more interesting, outrageous, opinionated? (Yes.) I’m thinking of the great New Yorker profile of Tomas Maier of Bottega Veneta (abstract only) I wrote about in January. There’s always the wealth of material detail I seek in design writing, but only fashion seems comfortable with devoting that much time to surfaces.

Meanwhile, I’m writing a short talk on Kevin Roche, to be delivered at the Museum of the City of New York on November 15. Title: “Brown and Mirrors”.