Ian Schrager

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: We talked about this in your memoir in our November issue. But, your road to hospitality wasn’t such a straight one. Talk to us about growing up in Brooklyn and then ultimately becoming a lawyer at first.

Ian Schrager: I was born in the Bronx and grew up in Brooklyn. So, I have all the credentials. Gun slinger from Brooklyn. And, I went to school up in Syracuse. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I went to law school thinking that it would give me some edge in the business world. And, it did. And then, we had sold Studio 54 to a guy who couldn’t pay the promissory notes. And so, we then traded the promissory notes he owned us for his interest in our hotel. And, that’s how we got started in the hotel business.

SSR: Can we go back a little bit. How did you meet Steve Rubell and ultimately decided to do Studio 54?

IS: Steve lived in the same neighborhood. But, it was in a different school district, which means we kind of grew up with the same values, which is great. I had a great childhood. Everybody was wanting to do better than their parents. It was upwardly mobile. And then, we went to school. Steve was older than I [am]. He was senior, I was a freshman. We met up in school, and we become just instant friends. Steve was the mayor of Syracuse. He used to play tennis with the chancellor. He used to give out the football tickets to the football stadium.

I don’t know. Maybe it was the people from Brooklyn. Everybody had come from Westchester and Long Island. And there weren’t that many people from Brooklyn up there. We could just gravitated together and became really, really, really great friends.

When he got out of school, there was in upstate New York fast food hamburger place called Carol’s. He tried to do it. And he got kind of treated disingenuously by people. So, the next thing he did he went into the steak business, back when that phenomenon about pay $5.95, you get all the steak, all the salad, all the sink, or you can drink.

And he expanded quickly. And he was stretched with the cashflow. He didn’t have enough money to pay for things. And, I was a lawyer. He became my client, and I kept the creditors at bay for him to survive.

And then, at that point, this is just in New York City when the baby boomers were coming here, and that age that everyone wanted to meet. It was just the emergence of the gay influence on culture. There were nightclubs that were emerging, people standing in line, taking abuse to get in. Though that’s good business for us.

And, the first thing were going to do is we were going to do four clubs in the restaurant spaces after the restaurants closed. That fell apart. We had done one club in Boston, a big gay club right across the street from Fenway Park. I was there when the guy was doing it. And, I told Steve, ‘I can do this.’ I saw the way he did it, and put it together and everything. And, I thought, I could do this. And we just decided to do one on our own. And it was Studio [54]. It was one of those things that you don’t know what you don’t even know. You’re not sure, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. And it just took off like holding on to a lightening bolt. It’s was just a natural hit. I’ve had natural hits. And I’ve other things that I work at. Studio was a natural.

SSR: Why do you think it was such a hit? I mean, looking back, what was it about the space? Was it the atmosphere, the moments that you created? The velvet rope outside? What was it? Why do you think there was just a great pulling?

IS: I’m often asked this. Nobody can really tell for certain. There aren’t many times in life when somebody can really experience true freedom. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t do. You couldn’t get up the next morning and walk away. There were celebrities all over the place and nobody cared. It was just a frolicking freedom that everybody had. That was the basis of it.

When I was in law school, we studied Woodstock about how 400,000 people can get together with no police force, no laws, and how they can all get along. Even though we’re all hearing about Woodstock now, I think more people talk about Studio as a seminal event. It was a phenomenon. It just held on.

SSR: Was there anything that you learned? I mean, I’m sure you learned so much during that time. But, was there anything about the design or the atmosphere that you have kept with you for the rest of your career?

IS: Well, I learned to pay my taxes. The good part about being in the nightclub business, for me, is that there’s no discernible product. You don’t have anything that everybody else doesn’t have. It’s just the same music, the same liquor, the same everything. So, all you can do to distinguish yourself is create that magic, that alchemy, when it all comes together it kind of makes people’s heart beat a little faster.

I think with not having a product, and trying to create this demand by people to come there, it kind of gave us an edge when I went into the hotel business, because I didn’t rely on the bed. I relied on creating the magic again. That has always been the distinguishing factor.It’s the same thing with Apple, the same thing with Disney. It’s always that kind of undefinable thing that happens when somebody just puts everything all together, and the soup comes out at the end. You’re not sure how it’s going to come out. And, it resinates with people.

SSR: Was there one memory of Studio 54? We talked about this a little bit with the memoir. But, was there one night, or event, or moment at Studio 54 that you still remember or look back on?

IS: I had a lot of memories. I think the first one. I always tell people that we opened up, first night we opened, and I remember going home around 1:30 or 2:00, maybe a little later. Steve stayed to the end. And I got a phone call from Steve like six in the morning. We were on the front page of the New York Post. It was like a dream. The front page of the New York Post. It’s like we arrived, I mean nobody had ever been on the front page.

The fact that they had a picture of Cher, and they didn’t have Studio 54 in the caption. We had to fight to get Studio 54 in the caption in the later editions. But, for some reason that was like, ‘We did it.’ And so that plus I have a lot of other memories, which I ain’t telling.

SSR: I always found it interesting that you said the velvet rope outside was a little bit of necessity because where Studio 54 was located. Can you talk a little bit about how that came to be?

IS: We were trying to think about how people were going to be selected, and they were going to come in and pay. We didn’t want them to stop at too many spots, because it comes onerous. They had to stop at the coat check, they had to stop and buy a ticket. They had to get that ticket. They had to get chosen. We were in a very bad neighborhood. Times Square at that time was not only unsafe, it was unsavory. It wasn’t a good neighborhood. In retrospect, it turned out good, because you can have a nightclub in a neighborhood like that because nobody is going to bother you.

But we didn’t want the street people. We wanted to have only party people. It was nothing to do with wealth, race, creed, color, or anything like that. We were naïve about that, because that selection process kind of offended the elite. And it kind of felt undemocratic. But, to us, it was most democratic. We were choosing people because we want the people to have a good time. We wanted to have people that would be free to party, that women could come there and not be bothered by guys. That a celebrity can come there and not be photographed. So, we were making selections.

Originally, the rope was to keep out the hookers and all the street people. But then it kind of became part of the show. Steve was really good at it because he had this kind of personality that he could say no to people and it wouldn’t be offensive. He’d get away with it. Somebody else would try to do it, and it would come off as mean.

And it wasn’t a marketing thing. We were exercising the same judgment one exercises when you have a party over your home, or when you have a dinner party, you want to put somebody talkative next somebody not so talkative, which is perfectly fine. But you can’t do that in the public domain. People got really aggravated about it. We didn’t really care.

SSR: Talk a little bit about how you and Steve complemented each other as business partners and friends for so many years.

IS: You’re lucky when you have friend in a partner like that. You’re lucky if you get married to somebody like that. We’re the left brain, the right brain. It wasn’t Mr. Inside or Mr. Outside. It’s an oversimplification. It wasn’t anything defined. We both gravitated toward what we each liked. I couldn’t do what he did, and he couldn’t do what I did.

If he was out getting most of the credit or all of the credit, it was fine with me because if he got the credit, I got the credit. It was that kind of love affair. And we complemented each other. So, I wanted to add something, I would ask Steve what he thought about something. If somebody came into the club, and I wanted Steve to do the hosting, he’d just get friendly with him. It worked like that. We were 50/50 partners.

It really was a 1 + 1 makes 3. One person once said that if Steve and I weren’t partners, we both would’ve been successful but not as successful if we wouldn’t have been together. In the hotel business in particular, if Steve were around, because he was a networker, I think we would have much more outlets commensurate with the ideas we contributed.

I didn’t care about that. I just liked creating it. If Steve were here, I mean, Bill Marriott and those companies are recent phenomenons. And they grew. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. But I think that we could’ve done that. And too bad Steve isn’t around to see the success of everything.

SSR: It’s been 40 years since Studio 54. And, you decided to do a documentary, which is amazing, if you haven’t seen it. Why did you decide now is a good time to really talk about it, because you didn’t talk about it much until then?

IS: I was embarrassed about what had happened. I was really embarrassed with my kids, just totally embarrassed. And, it still hurts to talk about it. I’m still embarrassed by it, frankly. But, I think having gone through the career and having done deals with really great people. I had to come to grips with how to tell my kids. One time, VH1, for those who remember that, there was a program about Studio 54. My daughters were in there, and it said something about that I went to jail. And my daughters were there, and [I said] I went to Yale. Still, I’m embarrassed about it.

But, I started to get a little frustrated because not having talked about it kind of opened up the arena for everybody to come these revisions and still come and start saying things. There were people and other things that just didn’t happen. So, I kind of wanted to set the record straight.

Barry Gordy wrote a book on Motown and said if the hunter doesn’t tell the story, the lion will. And that kind of resonated with me. I just thought it would be time to tell the story. I’m going to do a show on Studio. A new theatrical experience, which we’re working on now.

SSR: I mean, yes, it was a lot about the celebrities and the moments. But, the design of Studio. I mean, you put a lot of thought and saw into that and brought in kind of a dream team. Some of them you still work with.

IS: It happened again by opportunity. When we went into the business, it was the garage phase of it, like the way the garage phase with rock ‘n’ roll, the garage phase with inventing technology in somebody’s home. It was a very raw, inexpensive kind of thing. So, there was only one guy that did lights and there was only one guy that did sound, and they were told not to work with us.

We were forced to go to other people. We were forced to consider people from the theater, film, radio, music. We thought that the theater people were the most down to earth and the most creative. We liked their attitude. We went with the Jules Fisher and Paul Marantz. I mean, really brilliant lighting people. We were the first to go to a designer, a young designer who had done some restaurants in SoHo. So, there was an effort to take everything that was out there, put it all together, and try and take it up a notch. And that’s when the magic happened.

The moving of the props in and out, and all those kind of things. We did things from rock concerts, and the people were just mesmerized by it. They would come in and they would see this frenzy on the dance floor. Frenzy. I remember once taking two record guys in there, and one guy said to his partner, ‘Did you see what’s going on out there?’ It was just a spectacle. It was fun for us.

SSR: I love how you call them moments. They weren’t performances. It was a moment, and then they kind of went back out. So you never completely disrupted what was naturally happening on the dance floor.

IS: We were always afraid to stop the party, because you run the risk of not being able to start it again. We never did anything that lasted more than a second, a minute. It was like a pinch. It was ‘Here it is.’ Then, it was gone. And we never wanted to stop everything that was going on, I mean, because you run the risk that you can’t start it up again.

SSR: Let’s get to hotels because after Studio 54, there was a break and then there’s Palladium. You mentioned that for Morgans, you sold the note and that’s how you got into the hotel business. Did you ever want to go in the hotel business, or was this serendipitous?

IS: We went into the hotel business and we didn’t have a liquor license. We couldn’t serve liquor.

SSR: For a couple of years, right?

IS: Right. It shows you if the product is strong, it doesn’t matter. And so, we did Morgans and we hired a European designer, which was treacherous because they have different bathing habits. I mean that seriously. In Europe, they don’t care if the water closet is in a different room from the sink. They don’t care. In America, they do care. We have our sinks at 30 inches. And they have their sinks that are higher.There are just differences. They like square pillows, we have rectangular pillows.

But we thought that by going with this European designer, we would get a different look by definition, which is something I still do today. No experience is no hindrance to me in hiring somebody. You get fresh ideas, new ideas. And we broke every rule in the hotel business by questioning whether there was a reason for the rule or there wasn’t a reason for the rule.

You have to have nylon carpet in the room, real carpet in corridor because the nylon carpet gets changed a lot. That makes sense. We’re going to follow that. Everybody has vinyl or wallpaper on the wall and not paint. We’re not going to follow that. That makes sameness. Everything starts looking the same.

These indestructible smelly bed spreads. We were the first ones to do white sheets, white towels, duvets, un-patterned carpets, paint on the walls, glass shower doors. Doesn’t seem like a big thing. But, there weren’t no glass shower doors, because there was liability concerns. Fireplaces. We didn’t all those first.

And the business model also. Morgans was a very quiet, understated, introverted hotel that really felt residential, not just lip service. It really felt residential. You walked in there, and you thought you were in somebody’s home.

Then we did the Royalton, and we didn’t want people to pick up from Morgans and go and stay in the Royalton, the latest and greatest. We wanted it to have a different personality. If Morgans has not lobby, Royalton was going to have a big beehive of a lobby. If Morgans had no bathtubs, Royalton was going to have big bathtubs.

We juxtaposed it like that. And Morgans and the Royalton together were the prototypes for every other boutique hotel you see today, every one. Some of them are good. Some of them are not so good. But they’re all derivative of that. I wish somebody else was saying that. But that’s the truth.

SSR: And looking back, was it good that you hadn’t done a hotel before? I mean, what were some of the greatest challenges that you faced then, besides not having a liquor license?

IS: We didn’t have a liquor license in the Royalton either. We got it later. For roomservice, we would go across the street buy something, bring it in the hotel, put it in the plates, take it up. You always hear that kind of story. Just the way it is. No rules, whatever it takes. That was the approach that we had, and I still have it. It still would interest me.

SSR: And, from there, there was the Hudson, Delano, St. Martins Lane. Was the goal always to create a collection of hotels or did the opportunity presented itself, and then you continued on?

IS: We didn’t want to a chain. We wanted to be the anti-chain. All the hotels had different names. And, I don’t think that was smart. I think we could’ve had one name. It’s something the big companies in the public markets understand. People would not think that we’d be selling out if we had a brand, which is what I used to think.

I think that was a mistake. I didn’t have to have all different kind of names. You could have one name. There was a certain attitude and approach. You knew you were in one of our hotels. And I think it would’ve created more business value, Steve and I, if we had a brand.

I’ve learned certain things. Even when I did the deal with Marriott, everybody said, ‘Oh! You’re selling out.’ I couldn’t sell out. I couldn’t do it. And I haven’t. I told everybody, the hotel was going to be different and so on and so forth. I mean, it’s been difficult at times. They do everything by consensus. I don’t do anything by consensus. They are very democratic. We are a tyranny. But I learned a lot working with Marriott. And, it whet my appetite to do something on a much bigger scale, which is what we’re trying to do with PUBLIC.

SSR: We’ll go back in a second to Morgans in the early days. You said that Arne [Sorenson], who’s the CEO of Marriott took a chance on you. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that was so?

IS: Marriott behaved the way a lot of big companies do behave when they enter into a new market. They kind of lay back. They want to make sure that it’s a real business. Then they pound in, and they control the market. I’m not your typical Marriott guy. There was some territorial things that had to kind of be worked out.

I think it was Arne that wanted to get into the space. I mean, there are thousands of versions of these lifestyle hotels. It’s not a small business. It’s a big business, with premium rates and premium occupancies and a better business model.

And so, he took a chance. And, by the way, they put out about $8 or $900,000 to buy the hotels, because Arne believed in it. It’s so lucky. All the great hoteliers, all of them, love design. They all love to create. All of them. Now, sometimes finance guys, marketing guys get a hold of companies. But the real hoteliers, they want to create something. That’s what Arne did. That’s the risk he took. Everyone at Marriott, I don’t know how they felt. I don’t know how they still feel. But I know Arne is my guardian angel over there, because he knows that all I care about is the product.

If they open up a product that’s not good, I get hit.  I’ve even put money into a project if I thought that it needed something and the owner wouldn’t and Marriott wouldn’t.

SSR: And what did you want to create with EDITION? What was the space you wanted to disrupt?

IS: That particular space in the business is really overcrowded. Everybody is running into it. It took them 25 years to figure it out. Just like CNN is to news networks all over, that’s the way it is in the capitalist society. It’s over crowded. Everybody is looking for a niche. You can’t distinguish the hotel because this one’s red, and that one’s blue. There has to be a reason for being.

And I thought that all the lifestyle people were focusing on design. They didn’t really have a vision. So, it was contrived. People from a big hotel company call the The Wall Street Journal want to get a story on the color of the new bathroom tile they have. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t care about that. But they don’t kind of understand, because it’s derivative.

I thought with EDITION that if we can do as sophisticated design, maybe more sophisticated and have the same great food and beverage options and the great bars and the great entertainment, that people are used to getting from us. But, on top of that, we can layer in a really high level of service, non-obsequious service. Service that, ‘How may I help you?’ when you call a phone. But real, genuine humanity in dealing with people when they’re in the hotel.

If we could pull that off, that could separate EDITION from everybody else. And so that’s the idea. It’s a luxury lifestyle hotel. I don’t know whether Marriott liked this. But, I like to see it taking the button from Ritz-Carlton, because it’s younger, it’s more fun, and it’s very sophisticated. That was the idea of EDITION.

SSR: And, there’s one right around the corner. That’s your latest. How have you seen the brand evolve, and how have you helped create or change it along the way?

IS: Everyone is different. Of course they have common denominators. We’re doing it. I told everybody. Everyone’s going to be different, because different physical plans, different locations, different designers. I can’t work with designers on Marriott that are really out there, because Marriott wouldn’t have the patience for that.

I have to work with more known quantities and push. In PUBLIC and other things, I can work with those designers that are out there, because I do have the patience to get something really edgy, groundbreaking. Our design sense is just getting better and better and better. More and more refined. More and more paired down. No gratuitous, superfluous gestures.

I know the universe of possibilities. So it happens fast for me. I’m working on 40 Marriotts now. And it’s just happens fast me, where before I used to walk the street trying to decide on something.

It is true. The reflexes don’t keep up and all those kinds of things. But the brain, wisdom comes. I find it easier. I sit down and do a hotel with my guys. And I have a lot of great people, and it’s very quick. That’s the kind of benefit of where we are today.

I like to think that sometimes you have great architects, and every time they step up, they do a different kind of project, a different kind of look. Herzog & de Meuron, I like. Then you have architects like Mies van der Rohe or Richard Meyer. They just keep refining and refining and getting better and better at what they do. I think we’re getting better. And we love it. The people I’ve been working with, some of them for 25 years, one person for 40 years. We all communicate very well. I’m not afraid to make a mistake, which I think is important. I still love what I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t do it anymore.

SSR: And looking at some of the photos of St. Martins, and Delano. It’s definitely a different time for design and what you’re doing. Talk a little bit about Philippe Starck and working with him. That was kind of your second relationship after Steve, because you worked with him for many years. You guys really pushed the envelop, in terms of what design was at that time.

IS: Philippe is great. You can understand Philippe by looking at the boats he does. Here’s a new sail boat, a new motor yacht. I mean, new stuff. Philippe was brilliant, iconoclastic. We were kindred spirits. I remember seeing his work in a design magazine. It was a French brasserie. But he updated in some kind of way. He made it modern. When you went to the bathroom, you didn’t know what to do.

I just called him. He also came from the nightclub world. And, we just hit it off. When I did Morgans, I did it with Andrée Putman. She was a great stylist but not an original designer with things. Philippe was an original designer of furniture, which is continuing to evolve.

We went off and did a lot of great, great, great success together. He’s still a very, very good friend of mine. I actually love him. I mean, he’s very undisciplined. Sometimes I would get my plans on toilet paper. But it was worth the aggravation. Now, you’ll see with Philippe that he’s kind of taking from every little thing he does and puts it into a project.

With the boats. He did Steve Jobs’ boat. It’s beautiful. He did a couple of others. I still think he’s brilliant. I still think he’s doing great stuff. He’s my age. I’m very, very happy to his big success. Everyone was skeptical of it as well. I gave him the opportunity. I mean, it was Philippe. He was a brilliant talent.

SSR: You said Delano was a big moment for you and for I think the design in terms of leaving New York, going to Miami, and doing that whole white scheme. Can you talk a little bit about what that meant to you at that time?

IS: The only time I had a fight with Philippe, because I didn’t want what we had done in New York. This was an important project for me. It would’ve made me more than a New York City phenomenon. I was going outside. All the people on my staff wanted to do another hotel. I wanted to do the Delano, maybe because I stayed there with my parents when I was a young kid. I don’t know.

I wanted Philippe to make a presentation. And he was insulted. But we worked it out. I think he did a really, really, really great job there. We weren’t going to do pastels. We were kind of inspired by the plantations in the south. A lot of the Florida kind of things outside of Miami Beach. The hotels there grew up when air conditioning was first invented. These women with fur stools walking around the lobby. And so, this was going to be new. It was southern. It was Florida, but the old Florida.

To Philippe’s credit, he did a pool there. He comes from a country that they don’t have a pool in every yard like suburban homes. He did a pool that everybody copied, everybody. To attest to his brilliance, it took like 30 or 40 variances to get it done. It was only five feet deep. It was a water salon. It was big bath. It was heated in Miami.

I remember when we were in the business. He’d look at all the other hotels with all the pools, empty. Our was packed with people. Lke all the projects, Miami ratcheted it up. I was no longer a New York phenomenon. What we did traveled.

We paid $3 million for Delano. We put in $20 million to fix it up. It was $100,000 a key. It’s still doing business. It’s 20-some odd years later. It still does $15 or $18 million a year. I don’t know why. They’re looking to sell it for a couple of hundred million. I sold it already.

SSR: It’s a testament to what you’ve done. You mentioned PUBLIC a couple of times, and the photos are flipping through. Talk a little bit about PUBLIC here in the Lower East Side and what space there you wanted to reinvent or rethink.

IS: I think PUBLIC is the most important idea I ever had. We made some mistakes in trying to tap into what’s happening, which is always the way we start a project. We thought that the population in this country is going the 1 percent and everybody else. Why shouldn’t hotels follow that too? They have always have traditionally.

We thought they ought to be like, ‘Hey! Hotel for the public,’ like the way Volkswagen was the people’s car. It was a people’s hotel. The mistake we made is we thought that by having the same kind of food and beverage and having a really, really sophisticated design and getting rid of those services that were meaningless to people, that this was a new modern luxury for all. I still feel that.

But by using the word luxury, it kind of confused people on what to expect. We’re going to change that line, even though I still feel it is luxury for all, a luxury that’s accessible to everybody and anybody who wants it. We don’t have bellmen because everybody has wheels on their suitcases. We don’t have roomservice, which is going to disappear, because I don’t want to spend $30 to get a cup of coffee and a donut, and so on and so forth.

We have to change that because people came in and started thinking, and I remember when we opened up the Paramount. We were charging $100 for a room there, which they we were charging $200 at the Royalton. And people were worried, ‘Well, everyone’s going to leave the Royalton because they’re going to want to spend $100.’ Well, you’re not getting the $200 experience for $100. And people will learn that. It’s a different product.

PUBLIC is not for Millennials. That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard, doing a hotel for Millennials. Apple doesn’t do phones for Millennials; they do phones for everybody. Making great design accessible to everybody and anybody, that’s a sensibility. It’s not a demographic criteria. How old you are, how much you make. No. From the nightclub too, by the way. It either resonates with you or not.

Making that accessible to people, rich people too, who don’t want to spend $2,000 for a room, who would want to spend a couple of hundred dollars for a room. And staying in a small room, like a cabin on a yacht and having lots of public space for all your entertainment. That lifestyle hotel has been the inspiration for WeWork. If you ask Adam Neumann, he’ll tell you that our hotels were his inspiration.

For now, residences. I mean, it’s this public, social space allows you do something different in the room, which should be used for sleeping and bathing. You have everything else in the public space. PUBLIC is in that space. I’m giving everybody my idea.

PUBLIC is in that space. The most profitable space in the industry, dominated now by Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn. They’re doing the same thing in that space that we did in boutique 25 years ago. Go in and rethink it, take it up a notch, put the design in there, put profitable food and beverage in there where the companies can’t do that, and get a premium on an occupancy of 100.

Instead of it being a 75 to 150 unit business, give them 1,000 rooms, 1,000 hotels, which what Marriott has and what Hilton has. It’s a really important idea. Also it’s an important idea to do something for everybody. Like Charles Eames used to say, which is one of things we’re thinking of using. The best for the most for the least. That’s PUBLIC. I think that’s a  very important idea. It’s why I’m very excited about it.

SSR: What’s next for you? Is that what you’re looking at is try to expand PUBLIC?

IS: We’re trying to expand PUBLIC now. I’ve been partners with Marriott now for 12 years. I really love those guys. I learned a lot from them. But it distracted me a little bit from PUBLIC. I think PUBLIC is an important idea. I want to take it out. I want to do a bunch in New York and Miami and other places. We’re getting together a group of people so that we can really do a bunch of them.

SSR: Almost out of time before we do some questions. I know the details have always been what your strongest point is. But talk a little bit about what still gets you up each day and how involved are you still in the day to day? What do you think has been some of those secrets to success that has created this longevity?

IS: There are two secrets. One, you have to love what you do. How could you be good at something if you don’t love it. And two, you have to not be afraid of making a mistake. Public companies can’t make mistakes because they got shareholders, they got other things. I don’t care about making a mistake. If I make a mistake, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and try something else.

Like this ‘luxury for all’ that we did with PUBLIC that we’re going to change. If that happened at a big company, it would be seismic. It would be a major problem. I love what I do. That’s the secret. So I do it to live. I’ve got a great family, and I’ve got a great work, which is kind of everything. I still enjoy putting it in the face of skeptics. I still enjoy it.

SSR: We have a couple of minutes for questions.

Question 1: So, my question is going to very selfish, I’m sorry. I’m a little obsessed with this Ian, Steve, gay guy, straight guy bromance in the ’70s, when it wasn’t so easy to be gay. And, I think in many ways, he’s still here for you. He’s in you. He’s with you doing all this stuff. Is there one thing that you would say that he gave you in that relationship? And also, another selfish question, how did you resolve conflict?

IS: I didn’t care if Steve was gay. I did it to make a difference. He thought I might care. I didn’t care. I was the last to know. As a matter of fact, he didn’t want me to know. I think maybe he thought I would be judgmental about it. We had a lot of friends that were gay. A lot of the people that were setting the cultural tone in the city were gay. They were our friends.

It’s so funny because when we were in college, Steve didn’t get into the fraternity that we all wanted to get into because they considered his evanescence and enthusiasm, I don’t know, maybe not cool or something. I don’t really know.

Then you jump forward, he comes to New York, he’s the toast of the town. I tell my kids that just because didn’t do good in the spelling bee, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to be a great success later. Steve was good with people because he genuinely loved people. He was engaged with them, and they felt that. That’s the thing I think about Steve the most. He was sharp as a tack. And he wanted success as bad as I did.

His brother was 6’4″ so, I’m trying to figure out where the drive comes from. And, in terms of about being gay, in the beginning, I thought that Steve was maybe gay because he thought it was cool to be gay. I didn’t know. I was the last that it came up to. I don’t think he ever said anything to me until I said, ‘I don’t care one bit. Everything was great. The thing is that Steve wound up getting sick. And a lot of our friends didn’t get sick. He was maybe not as careful as he should’ve been.

Question 2: Hi, Ian. This is so exciting for me. You’re work with Philippe Starck kind of defined my life. So it’s really exciting to hear you speak today. I’m a huge fan of the EDITION. The one in Madison Square Park, that’s like a second home to me. The lighting in the center is such a big part of the experience. I’d really love to know how you developed the Scent with Le Labo, and how that’s a part of the experience at the EDITION.

IS: We were the first ones that went to Le Labo. The first ones. This is before there were bought by Yves Saint-Laurent. The rule was you sold as many scents as you can: touch, feel, taste, all of them. And having a distinctive scent in the air I think is important.

I’m not sure where we did it first, but it’s part of the whole package. It’s very important. And Le Labo has become a huge success. They’re very expensive now. So, we do our own stuff now. I think it’s very important. Anything that can touch a person emotionally, anything that they would take note of, it’s important to have that, because you never know which detail is going to be the detail that pushes it over the top. So therefore, all the details are important.

At PUBLIC, we took away a lot of the bathroom amenities, because we didn’t think anybody cared about them, like body lotion. So, we took it out. Now, everyone comes in and asks us to buy lotion. I think because they want to see it there, because it’s a telltale sign of something.

But I will tell you this, not having roomservice has not been an issue, not a bit. You’re going to see roomservice disappear, because I don’t know if it’s financially viable, and except for maybe those 1 percent hotels like in Europe. They would serve you roomservice a course at a time from a pantry in the hallway. It’s just one of those things that I don’t think people care about.

That’s one of the reasons we’re changing this luxury for all thing, because we need to set up the level of expectations for when people come here. This is less is more. But, it’s also better.

SSR: One more question.

Question 3: Good morning. We in the industry all seem to think Schrager and Marriott is oil and water, yet to you make it sound like it’s unicorns and rainbows. How does a visionary that’s boundary-less, who wants to change the world fit into that machine in Bethesda? How has your experience been?

IS: Respect. Arne and I have a very close relationship. And we respect each other. They wanted the same thing that I wanted. Those guys, with appearance, seemed different. Like Bill, gray suit and a red tie. I remember the initial press conference. He wanted me to get in gray suit and a red tie. He was going to wear a black T-shirt. That I’m not doing.

But, he has the same drive. The qualities are the same. It was difficult in the beginning. I’d meet with Marriott, [and they’d tell me] you can’t have a cantilever desk. People are going to sit on it. It’ll break. Where is that written?

It was difficult in the beginning. It was a little bit like sticking a hand in the cage with a cat. You get scratched. And eventually, that got cleared. And, I was able to deal because it was successful. If it wasn’t successful, it wouldn’t take anything from me.

But, there’s a respect that we have for each other. I often ask myself, “Would I like to deal with the real estate robber barons of New York City that I deal with all the time or the guys from Marriott? Everything by consensus. Everything takes so long. Neither one is perfect. But, I find the Marriott guys honest and straight. And it’s kind of refreshing. And so, I get used to it. But for those who do the real estate in New York, I mean, it’s a killer. I like the Marriott guys. I can’t tell you who, but I’m going to be doing something with another big company as well, who I think is worse than Marriott.

SSR: That’s a good place to end the conversation.

IS: Thank you