DAVID NETTO & WENDY GOODMAN
BE PART OF YOUR TIME
ON A MISTY DAY AT THE SOUTHERN TIP OF MANHATTAN, DESIGNER DAVID NETTO AND JOURNALIST WENDY GOODMAN , BOTH NEW YORK NATIVES AND AUTHORS, MEET US AT CASA CIPRIANI—THE ICONIC CLUB AND HOTEL RECENTLY OPENED IN THE HISTORIC BEAUX-ARTS BATTERY MARITIME BUILDING. WE’VE LONG BEEN ADMIRERS (FANS, ACTUALLY) OF THESE TWO INDUSTRY LEGENDS, ALWAYS INTERESTED IN WHAT THEY DO, SEE AND SAY. WHILE WE INVITED THEM TO A CONVERSATION ABOUT LEGACY, WE KNEW THAT ‘SHOP TALK’ WOULD FLOW ALONGSIDE. AS EXPECTED, AND TO OUR DELIGHT, THESE TWO OLD FRIENDS AND DESIGN COLLEAGUES PROVIDE SHARP COMMENTARY IN ANECDOTES, MEMORIES, SENSIBILITIES, OPINIONS AND IDEAS.
BE PART OF YOUR TIME
David arrives first, a few minutes early, and we have a quick coffee in the bar. He is keen on the building, knowledgeable about it and seems appreciative that the restoration and decoration—sensitive to architect Thierry Despont’s fascination with the greatest ocean liners—delivers. Wendy, equally no stranger to the city’s private sanctums, joins us in a cheerful (for the gray day) plaid woolen coat, and we head to our appointed meeting place upstairs. As for how the two of them met, Wendy says “we’ve been friends and colleagues for so long that I can’t exactly recall,” but David’s memory is more specific. “I was aware of Wendy ever since I was a sentient New Yorker, but we first met in 2002 after she contacted me about an early project of mine.” He stops just short of naming the day, though it seemed like he might know it, recalling their meeting with such excitement. Cameras are set, mics switched on, and we settle in for this introspective conversation overlooking New York Harbor.
UECO: Let’s start off ... how do you spend your day, Wendy?
WENDY: I work for New York Magazine telling the stories of the city through people’s environments, the way people are living. They are not necessarily legendary or even legacy makers, they might be, but legacy doesn’t have to be the plan (smiles). David is much more knowledgeable than really anybody about the history of design and its legacy.
UECO: David. You, as a designer. How did that get going?
DAVID: My path to design was organic, and I was more conflicted about it. I went to architecture school and wanted to do architecture that was history-based. When you go to architecture school now, it’s glass curtain walls, descriptive geometry, stuff like that. I became more interested in residential design after realizing that being a decorator was as good a way
to make an impact as being an architect. A decorator’s contribution is to shape a house, if they’re any good, by knowing how people want to live.
UECO: But you’re a writer too. Was there someone who said, ‘you’re a good writer, you’ve got it?’
DAVID: When Deborah Needleman became the editor of WSJ Magazine she wanted a design editor. She wrote me a one-line email that just said ‘I want to turn you into a writer.’ I had written two things for her for Domino; readers liked them, and I guess she liked them. It was an interesting challenge, because nobody took WSJ Mag seriously as a source of design then, but in a very short amount of time, she absolutely made the case that they should. I was thrilled to be a part of that.
UECO: You’re old friends and you both grew up in New York City. A place full of legacies AND legends. What jumps out?
DAVID: Well, the restaurant that is now gone, and can never be again, was Mortimer’s. If you try to explain why that is, it just disappears through your fingers. I wrote a gag essay about what it was like to be a loser there, when I was ten years old, with my parents. My mom liked the food and would make us go there for lunch. We didn't know anyone, and I was the only one who was mortified by that.
WENDY: The Oak Bar and Trader Vic's. And then Schrafft’s. I would go with my mother after the dentist. Very smart. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's my favorite place in the whole world. You'll light up with joy, David, at the memory of these—the Top of the Sixes and the Stanhope Cafe. It’s all blood memory, right? Being born and raised as a New Yorker, it’s part of my DNA. It’s physical, and there are certain places I miss so much, but I think, ‘OK, you’ve got to be looking forward.’
UECO: How do you keep in touch with these memories?
DAVID: I like to watch movies and look for old New York. The one that everybody knows is The French Connection, because you see all these exterior dolly shots at the Westbury Hotel.
WENDY: Oh and Breakfast at Tiffany's! When it was filmed, 5th Avenue was two way. The old Tiffany’s was absolutely flawless…(trails off)
UECO: Let’s talk about books. David, you have a new one, just out, about your own design work. What will it say about you?
DAVID: Well, I guess we’ll find out what legacy I may have with it! And if that doesn’t clinch it, then I don’t have a legacy. But after 20 years in this business, you’ve got to have a book, it’s sort of expected (laughs). I’ve accepted that it was my fate!
UECO: And Wendy, your book, May I Come In—tell us how you came to it?
WENDY: I had so much material from the gift of working for so many great magazines, and I wanted to show these incredible places and pay homage to these extraordinary people who let me come into their homes; many don’t exist anymore. I divided the work up between sort of the feeling and the characters of these places and ...
DAVID: ... (jumps in) You thought up the best title!
WENDY: (laughs) Well, it was just what I was always asking, ‘may I come in?’ So, I thought, there’s the title. I am excited and so curious about people. And that's my life. I am a worker bee; I think that to do what I do, and to do what David does, you must be interested in people, in listening to them. So yes, you have to really just want to know and tell stories. I only write about people I think are fantastic, right?
UECO: Right! So then who do you think, in our world of design, is doing exceptional work right now?
WENDY: (Pauses) A hard question, even if he wasn’t sitting here, I would say David has an extraordinary, unique antenna for design, that he can also make happen. Steven Gambrel has a very good take on the things that he loves to do. And his own homes are particularly amazing and wonderful. There’s a whole new crop of designers who have a very interesting take that is not based on classicism.
DAVID: I’m glad I didn’t have to go first (laughs). Among the Americans that I get excited about watching–Will Cooper. An enormous talent. Whatever he’s showing, it’s a surprise and site specific. He's drawn to obscure furniture. Another brilliant designer is Andre Mellone. He’s doing a very 1930/40s Donald Deskey, Mexico City kind of thing. He’s done this incredible lobby for a building in Rockefeller Center. It’s very sensitive, very deferential to the architecture of that place and yet it’s unmistakably new. And of the Europeans that I watch, I love everything I see from Fabrizio Casiraghi in Paris. I don’t know anything about him so it’s not a very informed judgment, but he’s clearly talented and I hope to meet him one day. I love how Giancarlo Valle merges this European sensibility with a warmth in the work. And to pay a compliment to somebody who’s not a decorator, but whose very curated, very postmodern apartment, when it was published in Architectural Digest , blew the top of my head off and I still think about it, I’ll add Cara Delevingne. You had to know what you were doing to pick those pieces. Clients deserve some credit.
UECO: Do you think social media plays into a designer creating a statement or daresay, a legacy?
WENDY: I don’t think legacy is an instant thing, ever. It's not a one-shot deal, you must have a body of work. You become a legend by doing extraordinary things over and over, because that's who you are. It’s a way of living, a set of values. So much of what we see on Instagram is so disposable.
“ I don’t think legacy is an instant thing, ever. It’s not a one-shot deal, you must have a body of work. You become a legend by doing extraordinary things over and over because that’s who you are. It’s a way of living, a set of values.”
DAVID: I think there is something counterintuitive going on. I believe Pinterest and Instagram and this sort of flood of design imagery that you get via your phone has actually made books more important. You can learn about what you like more quickly than ever. You can be 20 years old, from the Midwest, you can show up in New York, and suddenly you're talking about Mongiardino. I see this happen with the kids who work for me and the things that they’re interested in, and you just want to say, how did you first get exposed to this? In the past, we went to Archivia, which is a Manhattan bookstore Wendy will remember, and tried to figure out what to reach for on a shelf without knowing anything. You just were in there with thousands of great books, and maybe they were all great. Instagram opens that first door to what you might be drawn to. ‘This is what I like, this is totally cool. I didn’t think this was still going on in the world. I want to know more.’
UECO: So, are there some upsides to living in a fast, visual world?
DAVID: Yes (pauses). One syndrome I find, however, is that clients only believe something that's already happened. Which they see on Instagram. Because they trust history. They hold up a picture and say ‘we need to do this.’ And I always say, ‘what are the rooms that we’re going to make that add to the legacy that you're mythologizing?’
UECO: What’s an example of that, David?
DAVID: (laughs) It can be a completely
alien mode of thinking to a lot of clients to think that adding to something is within their grasp. So, it’s my job as a designer to get them to believe in me enough to see that we’re going to create new rooms that expand the canon that they’re already so excited about.
UECO: Would you say there is such a thing as a legacy interior?
DAVID: I’ve always thought that an editor's job is to know what’s good before anybody else. To look ahead and see around corners and share it. But none of us really gets to decide what becomes a legacy interior because that collective appraisal of something being important or interesting might be 10 or 30 years out. What Wendy does is show it; you might think something’s going to be a huge hit. And you share it and it is crickets. But 20 years later, the world figures out, ‘oh remember that story of Wendy Goodman’s?’ and then there is this momentum. It will become a legacy at that time, not at the time of its reporting.
UECO: Interesting. So Wendy, what are you looking for?
WENDY: For me, finding great stories, ones that might stand for something one day, isn’t easy. There is a lot of work out there, but it’s the same sectional, the same set of bookcases, the same colors. And if I walk in and don’t know ‘who’ lives there, what they like to collect and what that says about them, there isn’t a story there. For me.
David and Wendy outside one of Casa Cipriani’s shiplike suites reminiscent of the SS Normandie.
UECO: And how do you both put all this thinking to work?
DAVID: We’re looking for new quality. It’s got to be about quality. Something encouraging happened after COVID, everybody seems to have collectively realized the value of these old places. There’s a renewed wave of emotional attachment to The Carlyle, for example. Hipsters fell in love with The Carlyle because they didn’t want the old, great things to go away. Kids see things in a new way.
WENDY: Exactly. The designer who gets it doesn’t give the client an automatic life, right? Even though that’s what some clients want so much. A designer builds on the life their client has. And gives them surprises that they didn’t even know they wanted. That's important. That’s legacy.
UECO: Parting wisdom please?
WENDY: (pauses) Well, the thing is, I
believe you have to be part of your time. And you have to be plugged into what is going on in the culture, what’s going on with young people. Because if you can’t speak to the moment, there is a lack of authenticity that’s visible.
DAVID: (nodding) You have to write about the things people care about, not just things that you care about. And I completely agree with Wendy. You have to design in a way that is part of your time.
A SNOWY CITY SKYLINE
ROCKEFELLER CENTER, NYC
TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2023
12:11PM
