SCHRAGER TALKS DESIGN: How things have changed for Ian Schrager, the enfant terrible of the hotel industry who came to fame in the Seventies as cofounder and co-owner of Studio 54. Sitting on a small dais with Marriott chief executive officer Arne Sorenson in a conference room on the 44th floor of Hearst Tower, Schrager talked about his partnership with the massive hotel company. He has teamed up with Marriott to form the Edition Hotel brand, and next year, the pair will open the doors of the brand’s first Manhattan-based hotel, located in the Clocktower in Chelsea.
The melding of design and scale seems like a no-brainer, but Elle Decor editor in chief Michael Boodro, who moderated the discussion, remarked on the irony. “How do you say, ‘I want to start working with this man who has undermined big hotel chains?’ ” he asked Sorenson. After all, this was the same Schrager who has been credited with creating the boutique hotel.
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Sorenson also remarked on the irony, recounting his first encounter with Schrager at a Goldman Sachs conference years earlier. The ceo caught the tail end of Schrager’s presentation. “He said, ‘I stand for everything the opposite of the Marriott,’ ” noted Sorenson.
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With time, Sorenson won Schrager over, or perhaps Schrager was just ready for a new challenge.“I wasn’t some reluctant person,” he offered, explaining that he wanted to make his hotels and designs more accessible.
Boodro joked that Hearst’s T&E budget didn’t afford him the luxury of staying at some of Schrager’s or the Marriott’s higher-end hotels. The editor then asked how Schrager’s design philosophy has evolved. “I don’t want to walk through a nightclub,” he said, referring to lobbies at trendy hotels — again, a 180-degree switch from the lobbies he put in hotels such as The Royalton or St. Martins Lane in London. “That’s a thing of the past. People won’t tolerate it anymore.”
He added, “There’s a backlash with overzealous design.” While acknowledging he played a part in that trend, Schrager noted that it has been exploited in order to attract Millennial customers. “The notion of appealing to Millennials and ignoring Boomers is a big mistake,” Schrager said, adding that the principle holds true for the magazine industry. “If you do something good, it appeals across all age brackets.”
Asked about trends that he has noticed across industries, Schrager said, “The fashion business is under siege. It’s not doing well. It’s been taken over by the J.Los and the Miley Cyruses of the world.”