Ken Fulk’s flight delay means the designer extraordinaire is stranded at Reagan National in Washington, DC.
Given Fulk’s incredible life and friends on Forbes’ richest list, you might be wondering where the private jet is to swoop him in and fly him home to San Francisco. Did you design a jet with a hand-stitched glove leather seat?
Why is a design darling who can create homes, hotels, stores, restaurants, parties, and make any average Joe shine like Cary Grant, stuck at airports, with crowds in sweatpants? Are you waiting for Starbucks in
Fulk laughs. He revels in his rare special talents while maintaining the manners of a Southern gentleman from rural Virginia. “It’s my weird little superpower.”
Amidst the commotion, Fulk finds a diamond.
“I just took a photo of the most amazing looking man!” Fulk gets excited. “He had a long white beard, wore an orange cape, an orange jumpsuit, orange sneakers and had an orange suitcase. He was my new style icon. am.”
Fulk’s own outfit for the day is equally noteworthy, but if it’s less orange, it’s a gray windowpane plaid Thom Browne three-piece suit, slightly oversized plaid bow tie, white shirt, and white pocket square. , black brogue shoes.
His carry-on luggage reflects his fashionable yet functional aesthetic. A gray Away Roller Bag monogrammed with KEN in orange lettering and an LL Bean Tote also monogrammed.
“I’m not a sloppy traveler,” says the globe-trotting Fulk. Fulk plans to travel to Palm Beach on February 1 to speak at the Society of the Four Arts.
Let’s stop here for a moment and get Fulk-y with the right adjective.
is he sloppy? I never have. Snobby? Also never.
Fashionable? everytime. Over-the-top? of course!
Champagne popping, bar ladders, name drops? Yes Yes Yes!
He designed a bohemian party deck for supermodel Gigi Hadid and Miami’s Good Time Hotel for recording artist Pharrell Williams. I created a wedding reception for Sean Parker. He described it as “Citizen Kane meets Gatsby” and at least it cost him $5 million. Andy Warhol.
He’s been blessed with one bold name after another, including Stevie Nicks, Tom Cruise, and Emma Stone. We objected to the New Yorkers, who went full fulk in their new Palm Beach home.
As Aunt Mame says, if life is a party, Fulk is a caterer.
He’s a director, a set designer, and a star. Vanity Fair magazine called him “a standout figure in the world of design.”
He dresses up every day because life is simply more dazzling when you do.
“It’s not about status or fantasies or narcissism,” he says. “It’s caring.”
movies in his head
Fulk always cared.
The first page of his latest book, The Movie in My Mind, reads:
By the time he was four, he was responsible for setting the dinner table – always good china and fresh flowers – to decorate his parents’ house for Christmas.
Ken, a kindergartener, loves to scout for haberdashery, so he chose brass buttons to match his navy blazer.
He repeatedly watched old Hollywood movies to feed “my illusions of grandeur, as my mother would say.”
“I didn’t grow up with great privilege. I come from a working-class family,” he says. His parents owned and operated a restaurant and lived about an hour outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.
“My mother came from a large family of 12 children. It was a matrilineal society. It was a thing and I have that southern one.
The other is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Architectural marvels shine through in his boyhood memories. He frequented and planned parties for interesting and influential people, and imagined where to put the pool and a great cocktail lounge.
“I was always a bit of an alien,” he recalls. And a little shy. Therefore, pay attention to his talents.
Fulk combined his love of English and history at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and after graduating in 1987, worked briefly in marketing in Boston. When he moved to California in the ’90s, his would-be husband, Kurt, a classically-trained pianist, and his girlfriend Wootton, he staged a friend’s house, and after three martinis, no one was there. also started throwing unforgettable kinds of parties.
Today, he is one of the world’s top design professionals, one of Architectural Digest’s ‘AD100’, and a creative staff of over 80 people assists in the production of his ‘films’.
Every space begins with a story. Fulk imagines who, what, where, what they wear and what they whisper.
As Rob Report recently wrote, he’s a master at mixing “exotic, eccentric and elegant.” In that respect, he’s a bit like Addison Mizner, who brought excitement to Palm Beach in his late 1920s with tiles, tapestries, textures, and jazzy friends.
A bar designed by Fulk would be utterly boring if it weren’t for good conversation. sorry. Talk to Nick and Nora Charles and dive right into the cocktail-sipping world of The Thin Man.
For example, to design the Carbone restaurant in Miami, Fulk envisioned a world as smooth as velvet.
“I wanted a kind of unbridled sex appeal, a true sweet life,” he wrote in “The Movie in My Mind.” “Maria Callas waking up in the arms of Frank Sinatra in a suite at The Gritty Palace. Gorgeous, glittery and the perfect pairing.”
He saw everything in his head, just like he did when he was a boy.
Recently, he literally got the most over-the-top job ever. It was a reimagining of Cloud his club on the top floor of the Chrysler Building in New York. In 1930, an elite lunch club occupied his 66th, 67th and 68th floors of the spire. Fulk’s spectacular Art Deco current vision of his designs is on the 61st floor and on the terrace overlooking his 62nd floor’s signature eagle his gargoyle.
“Atop the Chrysler Building with Abby Rosen (who bought the building in 2019 and is married to Samantha Boardman, who happens to be the daughter of Pauline Pitt of Palmbeecher), far above where the eagle is I said to Abbey, “Have you ever thought of owning these iconic buildings?” But that was about it. Do you know what you want?
“I said: Absolutely! Yes!”
his palm beach story
Fulk always knew where he wanted to go, and now in his mid-50s he also knows:
That means taking the time to configure the costumes, place settings, and rooms.
No problem driving through the airport to wait for Alaska Airlines. Especially when a wonderful character with an orange cloak walks past you.
Everything Fulk sees is like a reel in a never-ending loop … inspired by travel, film, fashion, art, history, novels, or something as basic as the fraudulent scent of fire. It’s a swirling amalgamation of thought-provoking ideas,” he writes in his book.
His Weird Superpowers: His Reels Become Real
“I have the great privilege of working with people who can afford anything money can buy. What they really want is to spend their time meaningfully,” he said. increase. “It matters where, with whom and how you structure your life. It’s something we all crave: Imprinting memories.”
He hopes to create more memories in Palm Beach, which is “having such a renaissance.”
“I have a good friend, Cornelia Guest, and she and her mother sum up my personal romantic thoughts about Palm Beach,” he says. Mizners… retains some of America’s imagination and charm, yet people actually live there.
If you see Fulk walking down Worth Avenue, wave to him.
One thing is for sure, he’s not wearing sweatpants.
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Ken Fulk is a style expert and author as part of Stolman’s “Conversations on Style” series on February 1 at 3:00 pm at The Society of the Four Arts, Dixon Education Building, 240 Cocoanut Row. An interview with Steven Stolman. Tickets are $25. To reserve, visit fourarts.org or call 561-655-7226. Followed by a signing of Fulk’s book, The Movie in My Mind.
