“EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE SAYS MILK IS ALL ABOUT FASHION, IT’S NOT FASHION WE REALLY CARE ABOUT. IT’S CULTURE.”
“Can I tell you something?” Mazdack Rassi asks.
Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire, built by the magnate’s
We’re sitting in his office, an unnervingly sophisticated
obsessive ownership of each component along the
space where he presides over the web that is Milk—the
production line.
multimedia company he founded here in this former
When I first arrive at the brick warehouse on West
warehouse in the Meatpacking District, which he bought
15th Street, across from Chelsea Market, I pass Milk’s
in 1996, when animal carcasses still hung outside,
art gallery—currently shuttered for installation of a
and sold last year for $284 million. Poised on a black
Peter Arnell retrospective—to await an elevator amid
leather lounger, Rassi’s slim physique is sheathed in an
a handful of models primping on their iPhones. They
understated button-up, navy pants and leather shoes
exit on the second floor, where House (Milk’s casting
with no laces. He brandishes a demitasse of espresso,
arm) selects the too-pretty faces you see in Coca-Cola,
delivered by the lobby’s Smile Café, and confides, “We
Target and Gap ads.
are inherently cool.”
the catwalk that had just drawn Fashion Week crowds
secret projects, where Vogue shoots its covers, where
to Milk’s emerging designer showcase, Made, which
Patti Smith plays private shows, where Die Antwoord
has nurtured names like Alexander Wang and Proenza
found fame and, less importantly, where Lindsay
Schouler into stardom.
Lohan once broke her wrist (the headline the next day read “Spilt Milk”).
Carly Otness/BFAnyc.com
Nearby, Studio D is empty and eerily quiet, bereft of
This is, after all, where Madonna works on top
The elevator climbs past the offices of companies like Giorgio Armani and Mulberry to the eighth floor, where
“Even though everyone says Milk is all about
the rest of Milk is housed. I enter an immaculate sitting
fashion, it’s not fashion that we really care about,”
area peppered with large-format photographs and low
Rassi explains. “It’s culture.” Milk’s multihanded
suede benches. White orchids at the reception desk
approach recalls Andy Warhol’s Factory, where artists,
contrast with a Philippe Starck-designed floor lamp—its
architects, dancers, filmmakers and photographers
disconcerting base a giant, golden gun.
mingled to produce startling, multigenre works. Yet
Despite the lunchtime hour, a massive mirror ball
Rassi’s factory, filled with what he calls “renaissance
rotates in a nearby room, casting a speckled glow over
creator kids,” is far more productive than Warhol’s
Milk Equipment Rental’s gear. It’s utilized by Milk’s
ever was. In fact, it might be more closely related to
award-winning film company, Legs, the force behind
73
sc.w14.milkNC.indd 5
2/28/14 3:14 PM