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The mod couple: designers Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler chat about Doonan's new book and their totally gorgeous life together
Advocate, The, June 21, 2005 by Sean Kennedy
"I had a vision of myself lying on a big floor pillow in a big apartment," says Simon Doonan, the author and fashion maven, of his daydreams while growing up in a "crappy" English town. "I remember seeing The Boys in the Band when it came out and thinking, I want to go live in New York in a groovy apartment! I didn't think, Oh, look at those tortured queens. I thought, Look at that furniture!"
"And the brass valet in the closet! The cracked-crab hors d'oeuvres!" his boyfriend, the designer Jonathan Adler, chimes in.
"Yeah!" says Doonan. "I thought, Blimey, they're having fun!"
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Doonan, 52, and Adler, 38, are certainly having fun themselves, what with their booming careers and gorgeous multimillion-dollar duplex apartment in New York City, decorated by Adler and recently featured in The New York Times as the epitome of the high-low aesthetic currently in vogue in design circles. (The couple, who've been together 10 years, also own places in New York's Shelter Island and Palm Beach, Fla.)
Doonan, who first made his name doing cheeky, sometimes outrageous window displays as the creative director of Barneys New York--he's thinking for this year's holiday season "Camilla Parker Bowles rubbing Charles's back in a bath ... a whole mad-royal thing"--has launched a successful side career as a writer. His new book, Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (Simon and Schuster), mines the same oddball terrain as its best-selling predecessor, Wacky Chicks. Meanwhile, Adler's new sideline is his hotel and residential design business--he recently completed work on the Le Parker Meridien Palm Springs--a by-product of his namesake line of upscale ceramics and home furnishings.
"We're just a couple of F-listers," insists Adler on a weekday afternoon in their pad. Jokes aside, both men are definitely more visible these days, thanks in part to Adler's new home-furnishings line at Bed Bath & Beyond and Doonan's occasional guest appearances on America's Next Top Model. Yet in person they are both down-to-earth, their affection for each other palpable. (Indeed, throughout the interview Adler rested his left foot on Doonan's feet across from him.)
If their relationship seems like one of those enviably perfect partnerships in love and life, that's because it is. "Certainly I show Simon what I'm doing and talk to him about it, and he shows me what he's doing," says Adler. "But I think the most noteworthy thing about us is that we probably wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't have each other. It's something we've both spoken a lot about--that we wouldn't have the courage and pluck to do it."
That courage and pluck have taken Adler and Doonan a long way from their origins--in, respectively, suburban New Jersey and Reading, England--a journey Doonan chronicles in Nasty. "A lot of my book is about coming from a ratty, crappy little town and seeing in the distance the glamour and fun and excitement of the city, and we live that now to a large extent," he says. "I get to go to a lot of fun, glam things, but if I feel like staying home, I don't feel like I'm missing out."
And if that makes him and Adler seem like "an old married couple compared to the full-on hedonistic gay culture," they don't care. "I mean, are we swinging from the rafters and doing crystal meth and fisting each other every Saturday night? No," Doonan says with a laugh.
Adler adds, "When I hear what people are up to, I'm completely shocked. I just heard about this P 'n' P ["party and play"--i.e., having unsafe sex while on crystal meth] situation. I know it's been some whole thing, but I just didn't even know."
"That just seems totally horrid to me," says Doonan, "but a lot of gay people don't relate to that either."
Of course, when it comes to other excesses, they do indulge, even if doing so may come with a price. "The other day I was getting off the subway and I was all done up--I had these big tortoiseshell glasses on, a pocket square, and my Goyard bag with a monogram on it," recalls Doonan, "and this guy said to me, 'Boy, you're a real faggot, aren't you?'"
He then offers up what could be considered a mission statement for his and Adler's household: "And I just laughed, because I thought, I live in this big, glamorous apartment that my boyfriend decorated, we were just off to Palm Beach for the weekend, I have a gorgeous dog, a family that I love, and everything anybody can really want in terms of happiness, contentment, satisfaction. I just imagined where this fat weirdo lived and why, and it was just beyond horrible."
Kennedy also contributes to Cargo and New York magazines.
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