Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/130754
designer, and together they have decked out the much-photographed seven-story town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where they live with their four young children. Krakoff's upcoming departure from Coach means he'll be more focused on what he produces under his own name. That includes the clothing, but also his myriad other projects. Many of these are collaborative, such as a small black matte box created for the famous macarons of French confectioner Ladurée. This past spring, he organized a charity exhibition at New York's Friedman Benda gallery of 1,000 solar-powered lamps created by Evans Wadongo, a Kenyan-born engineer. Krakoff contributed the felt covers for the lantern handles. The New York office is less work space than urban Werkstatt, where the technically minded Krakoff and his team might develop a jewelry line from discarded chunks of Murano glass and use a material like felt to cover bodies as well as furniture (Krakoff has a felt obsession and loves the work of Joseph Beuys). "Some people think our brand feels like a movement, like the Bauhaus," says Krakoff. Unsurprisingly, the clothes seem to have developed something of a following in the art world, worn by fashionable dealers such as Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Shaun Caley Regen. Krakoff, an avid photographer, has shot them, as well as Dominique Lévy, Valentina Castellani, Lucy Chadwick and others in their galleries and among the works they show for "Women in Art: Figures of Influence," which was just published by Assouline. Other women who favor his sharply cut garments and structured handbags: Michelle Obama, Vogue editor Anna Wintour and the actress Julianne Moore. One of the Real Housewives of New York carried a tote on an episode of the reality TV franchise, which Krakoff admits he watches regularly. Whomever the wearer is, says Krakoff, "I think they see in the clothes the possibility of being singular. It has to be desired. Fashion is not a commodity game. It's about creating something that a woman or man just has to have." That feeling is not unlike the experience of collecting, says Krakoff. "Collecting is that dreamy kind of thing. It's an experience where you just lose yourself. I was always interested in the historical aspect of it. There 102 CULTURED "I love to have my hand in where design and creativity are going."—Reed Krakoff was just something about having something from another time, and understanding why the person made it. I guess I have a very romantic view of history." Perhaps, but Krakoff has a rather practical approach to living with it. He insists that the art- and design-filled interiors of his home are meant to be lived in. "There's nothing I hate more than a house where people say, take your shoes off, or don't sit there. It's furniture. It's not meant to be a still life." The best houses, he says, "are the ones that have great things but also a have a comfortable place where you can put your feet up and read the paper." In Krakoff's home, that spot might be a 1930s sofa by Jean-Michel Frank or a Deco chair by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. Among the other major 20th-century designers and objects represented in Krakoff's enviable holdings: mirrors by Line Vautrin, an alligator chair by Claude Lalanne, a pristine white Jean Royère sofa, Tiffany lamps and sculptural pieces by Alexandre Noll. "I collect from every decade," he says, but these days is more interested in contemporary designers, like Ron Arad, Mattia Bonetti and Joris Laarman. "I love to have my hand in where design and creativity are going." His taste in art is similarly wide-ranging. Among the painters whose work he has collected are Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Adolph Gottlieb, Al Held, John McLaughlin and Wade Guyton, whose Whitney show of last year "just felt like a new take on painting." Although he arguably makes art every day, Krakoff does not think of himself as an artist. "That's not the way my brain works. It just wouldn't occur to me to think about it that way. No need," he says. "I've been doing this a long time. I don't think of myself as anything. I just do the work."