The King of Cozy Strikes Again

He’s never been one to frequent bars, but he runs some of the hottest boi^tes in New York and L.A.

His look of choice is jeans, but he runs Giorgio Armani’s five cafes.

“When I get dressed, I do wear Armani,” Rande Gerber concedes, “but I just feel comfortable like this.”

Gerber’s quest for comfort has been his ticket to one of the cushiest berths in New York night life. Tagged a “visionary” by the New York Times and “one of the country’s most influential ‘night life entrepreneurs’ ” by Time Out New York magazine, Gerber is credited with hatching the intimate lounges of the ‘90s as a relaxing alternative to the huge, blaring clubs of the ‘80s.

“It’s very ‘80s to have a big club,” says Village Voice night life columnist Michael Musto. “It’s impossible to open and maintain them because of zoning and Mayor [Rudolph] Guiliani cracking down on drug practices. Everyone is veering toward smaller lounges, and the Whiskey Bar is a forerunner of that.”

And now the proprietor of the bicoastal Whiskeys as well as the bar in Ian Schrager’s Morgans Hotel is gearing up for his latest venture--the lofty Sky Bar, which opened along with the rest of the renovated Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles on Sunday.

And if it’s anything like its predecessors, the Sky Bar will water some of the most fabulous-looking people in the most fabulous-looking city.

“With a room like that, an average person who looks like myself is more likely to have a nervous breakdown [there] than on a stalled subway car,” says Bob Morris, Night columnist for the New York Times.

Gerber’s constituency is the model-actor-musician-agent herd--”a very skinny crowd in little black dresses and people who seem to have stepped out of the pages of Allure magazine and the men that love them,” Musto says. “That’s why it’s perfect he’s opening a place in L.A. His clubs always seem to be a little touch of L.A. in New York.”

Gerber, 34, also made the gossip columns for dating Cindy Crawford, a topic that makes him visibly uncomfortable. “The majority of those articles are fabrications,” he says, cringing on the edge of a pristine white couch in his Philippe Starck-designed room at the Mondrian. “Cindy and I are friends.”

Gerber’s own cover boy looks have been his fortune. That and serendipity, which led to a brief career as a Ford model on summers off from the University of Arizona. A photographer friend had passed on shots of him to the agency, and poof! Shoots in New York. Trips to Greece.

Boring trips to Greece, as it turned out.

“You sit around and wait for them to shoot you,” says the Long Island-born Gerber. “I never saw it as a business or something I was really interested in doing.”

His launch as a bar impresario was similarly heaven-sent. Gerber became a real estate broker in New York after college and tried to help client Schrager find someone to run the bar in the trendy midtown hotel he was planning, the Paramount, which opened five years ago.

“I was bringing in people and Ian’s real tough,” Gerber says. “He’s very picky. So I was bringing him all the hottest [bar managers] in New York to come and open up at the Paramount, but after he would meet with them they just didn’t turn him on. I said, ‘Ian, I’ve brought you everyone I could think of. There’s nothing more I can do.’ And then he asked me if I’d be interested in doing it.”

Schrager says Gerber’s lack of bar experience was actually a plus when it came to opening the Whiskey at the Paramount. “You get a fresh approach by definition,” says the former Studio 54 partner. “It’s not rocket science.”

What it is, is hard to define. Schrager says he just responded to Gerber “instinctively,” although Gerber’s success also benefits from association with Schrager’s palaces to minimalism designed by Starck.

Starck also designed the Sky Bar, which spills out of an open hut, sprawls around the pool with music piped in underwater and tumbles down cushioned steps outside.

The ambient music will reflect Gerber’s taste, which has drawn a music industry crowd at his Whiskey at the Sunset Marquis Hotel.

“I love blues, mellow rock ‘n’ roll,” says Gerber, who’s based in New York. “You want to be able to come and have a drink and not be bothered by the music being too loud and having to yell.”

He says comfort is key, and with money patrons like John Travolta and Mel Gibson putting the Morgans into Morgans, he’s strict about seeing to the comfort of celebrity guests. That means any employee who snitches to the press is out.

Of course, it helps to be a celebrity if you want to get in the door. The door policy is mostly guest list and reservations. The hardy can grapple with the doorman if the place isn’t booked.

“If you let in too many people,” Gerber says, “it becomes a club scene, and everyone’s standing around and you get a bunch of guys who are drunk trying to hit on the girls.”

Gerber’s sense of restraint also meshed with Armani’s spare style in the intimately lit Armani Cafes and Gerber operates in Emporio Armani stores, including ones in Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa. A sixth is pegged to open on New York’s Madison Avenue next spring.

Gerber is talking to Ralph Lauren about another designer restaurant, and he’s busy planning two new clubs in New York--the cavernous Diamond Horseshoe opened six decades ago by Billy Rose, and the Smoke Club in New York’s Doral Hotel.

What he’s not planning is any foray into The Industry, despite a bachelor of arts in television and film production and a heavyweight clientele at his establishments.

Says Gerber: “It’s nice to be able to have a conversation with someone and know there’s nothing they can gain from me, nothing I’m looking for from them. It’s a lot more real than if I wanted to be an actor and met a director. Ninety-nine percent of the conversation is bull.

“I feel like I’m in the entertainment business. But I’m entertaining them.”