A man of the people

In a Beverly Hills alleyway, Philippe Starck is attempting to reach Europe. After trying several cellphones, he finally gets through to publisher Benedikt Taschen, who is traveling somewhere in Germany. “Oh, my dear Benedikt,” he booms.

The man who created the Mondrian Hotel interior, Manhattan’s Paramount, Miami’s Delano, Tokyo’s Nani Nani, who designed -- among countless other products -- that ubiquitous tripod citrus squeezer and stacks of fashionable chairs, has come for a quick rendezvous with the crew building a bookstore he designed for Taschen on Beverly Drive. He is standing among trash cans and parked cars because the site is too noisy.

Nearby, Starck’s American agent, Michele Caniato, shakes his head slightly. “Ah, the crazy life,” he says.

Starck, it turns out, is accustomed to luxe surroundings. He grew up in the affluent 16th arrondissement in Paris. The first project that brought him attention, in 1978, was the nightclub Les Bains Douches. In 1983, French President Francois Mitterrand asked him to do the private apartments at the Elysees Palace. Then came the streamlined Cafe Costes, and then entrepreneur Ian Schrager and his stable of hotels, including the Mondrian. The rest, as they say, is histoire.

Seated in Caniato’s silver Mercedes behind the bookstore site, his call over, the 54-year-old Starck explains his philosophy. “Me, I don’t make stores,” he says. (He’s designed several, including a Taschen store in Paris and, last year, a boutique for fashion heavyweight Jean Paul Gaultier.) “This is part of something I believe in.”

Fifteen years ago, he says, a number of publishers approached him about doing a book, but he wasn’t interested. “Why make another coffee table [book] which is only for rich people? It’s a little stupid.” But then he was contacted by Taschen, who had become famous for putting out affordable art and design books and who envisioned a handsome volume on Starck that would cost only $15. That began a friendship, and friendship, he says, is the real reason he agreed to do the store.

“I love Taschen,” he says. “He invented completely democratic publishing. Like me. I hope I have invented the democratic design, which is completely respectful and deeply moderne.”

Moderne is a favorite word. “Design” is not. “I’m not a designer,” he insists. “Design doesn’t interest me. I don’t read about design or go to exhibitions about design. I use this vehicle like other people use political discourse, songs or books. For me, Taschen is political.”

Inexpensive access to information is “deeply structural moderne,” he says. “Elitism is not moderne.”

Taschen, for his part, chose Starck to design the store because “I wanted the Sistine Chapel,” he says by phone. The space was intended not as “a cold fashion boutique but a place where people like to stay” -- and “hopefully buy some books.”

The store may not be exactly Vatican style, but it will have art across the ceiling -- displayed in frames above a mahogany, glass and brass interior that’s intended, its promotional material says, to give it an “Old Europe-style” look. In computer-generated illustrations, it suggests a modern take on a haberdashery.

And though the inventory -- both Taschen and other books -- will be affordable, the shopping experience will be luxurious, says Starck, who is wearing jeans, light suede shoes, a white shirt and a watch of his own design. Exchanging cash for goods will be “a sensual experience.”

When the store opens next month, it will also be the only bookstore in Beverly Hills. Starck envisions it as “the heart of life and intelligence.” He says, “It’s not to sell more books but to bring something to a city more interested in television.”

Starck’s other current projects include a boutique hotel in Rio de Janeiro, a hotel and residential complex in Buenos Aires and offices in Russia. Yet despite owning 15 homes around the world, along with a staff that tends each place for him and his wife, Nori, a former New York schoolteacher, and their three children, Starck claims he is really a man of the people.

His work life is like a Scottish shower: very hot, then very cold. He’ll spend one year among rich people, developing expensive prototypes, he says. The following year, he’ll take what he’s learned to the masses -- through a line of products for Target, for example. So in 2002, there was a design for a $2 baby bottle, followed this year by a $200-million yacht. Next year will be cheap again, although he doesn’t want to talk about it yet.

“I know nothing about beauty,” he says. “But a $2 bottle is a love object, an object of respect and tenderness for the mother. When women become mothers, they are surrounded by ugly things.” The baby bottle, by contrast, is a feminine object, almost like a bottle of perfume, “so she can stay elegant and sexy and keep her husband.”

Society has lost its dreams, but philosophers stay silent, he says. Instead, it’s a “poor Christmas gift designer like me who is obliged to speak out.”

On his Web site (www.philippe-starck.com), visitors can sample his pensees displayed next to pictures of products: pasta, scooters, furniture, buildings. “Modern intelligence is feminine,” goes one observation.

When the Centre Pompidou in Paris offered him a retrospective, Starck was coy. He says he wasn’t interested in a show that would be needless advertising. “I’m not an icon, a star,” he says. “It’s not a superman thing. Everyone can do it.”

Eventually, he relented and staged a show this year without a single Starck-designed object, “because my museum is your home -- your kitchen, your bathroom.” Instead, he did “an action”: 15 busts with his image projected onto them, talking incessantly. “I made myself ridiculous.” To hear the totality of Starck sayings, a visitor had to stay six hours. Many did, coming back for more, says the designer, who adds that the show was “huuuge,” but also polemic.

“He wants a nod to surrealism. But it’s more Benny Hill,” wrote Tom Dyckhoff in the Times of London. “Fifteen minutes in this exhibition is enough to drive anyone bonkers. And when his images fade and the one-liners and barking slogans pall, his reputation rests ultimately on the objects themselves. Oh dear. In their drive to be eager and friendly, most have an annoying habit of not actually working.... That bloody lemon squeezer is famous for not squeezing lemons.”

But Starck says that with the Paris exhibition, he meant to explain something to visitors: “Wake up. Stand up. Stop being a consumer.”

Of course, if people took his advice, there would be no one to buy Starck products. “Perfect,” he says. “It’s what I want. We don’t need to consume.”

The interview is over. Starck is carrying a new toy, a present from Camilla Trigano, who will manage the Beverly Hills store. “Ah, un cadeau,” he said when she handed him a bag bearing the Apple logo. “I think it’s a fully loaded iPod.” (It was.)

It was a good present for him, he says. “I have everything. I want nothing. But music is pure.”

At the entrance to the store, he is impatient. “Vite, vite” (Fast, fast), he tells Trigano and a photographer. He’s meeting that other man of the people, Wolfgang Puck, for lunch at Spago. Then he’s off to Santa Monica to see a client before flying back to one of his many homes on the Continent.

“A bientot,” he says, and strides briskly out the door.