The Independent has a profile about Frenchman Philippe Starck, who is “arguably the most famous designer dans le monde” and whose work will soon be seen by millionauts flying into space aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo out of Spaceport America.
He made his name as an interior and product designer with his work on the Café Costes in Paris (1984), his Juicy Salif lemon squeezer for Alessi (1990) and his transparent Louis Ghost chair (2002). His subversive style, his outgoing personality and his increasingly ostentatious commissions made him the design world’s biggest celebrity, so much so that he can now pick and choose his projects: the £200m super-yacht for Russian banking oligarch Andrey Melichenko which set sail last year, a New Mexico spaceport for Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic, and Design for Life, the reality show he is currently fronting on BBC2. In the series, 12 young designers compete to win an apprenticeship at Starck’s Paris headquarters. He is in London to promote his new clothing line, which launched earlier this month at Harrods….
Starck was born in Paris in 1949. His father was an aeronautical engineer. “He was an inventor,” says Starck. “It is clearly in the DNA of the family. We both have the kind of job where in order to feed your family you must use your brain.” His mother was a painter. He attended Paris’s École Nissim de Camondo, a private product design school, between 1965 and 1967. Then, aged 19, came his inaugural venture: establishing his first company, making inflatable objects. He went on to design nightclub interiors, but his big break was in 1982: President Mitterrand asked him to redesign the private apartments of the Elysée Palace (the French president’s official private residence). He followed it two years later with the Café Costes, the Royalton and Paramount hotels in New York, the Delano in Miami and the Mondrian in Los Angeles. And his fame just kept on growing….
While there is no doubting his talent in some areas, Starck has plenty of critics. Those who don’t find his work garish (“The kettle he did for Alessi for me looked like something out of an Asterix comic book and burned people’s hands, and I thought that was unforgiveable,” says Dick Powell, founder of design consultancy Seymourpowell in Design for Life) – or useless (“The lobster-shaped lemon squeezer actually sprays lemon juice into your face,” says design critic Alice Rawsthorn, also in the programme) think he is no longer the sole standard bearer for his art….
Read the full story.
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