![]() The firm is making so many products-more than 400 a season-that in 2006 it split into three separate lines. Last year’s sales tally, of $40 million, was the company’s best yet. ![]() The recent unfriendliness is not the result of a business in disarray. Still, this is a remarkable turn of events for the self-consciously kitschy Paul Frank Industries, which succeeded by persuading its customers that, as its slogan says, “Paul Frank is your friend.” Penney, while Helmut Lang and Jil Sander have both grated under the knuckle of Prada. Halston, famous for designing Jacqueline Kennedy’s inaugural pillbox hat, came to regret selling his name to J. The history of fashion is riddled with examples of labels breaking with their founding designers and then wrangling over who gets the name-and the spoils. That’s because Frank created his own Mickey Mouse in Julius, the widemouthed monkey that adorns a substantial portion of the products sold by the company. To Frank’s defenders, it’s as if Walt Disney had been separated from his eponymous empire. Depending on whom you ask, late last year Frank either quit or was forced out of the company he co-founded with Oswald, the C.E.O., and Heuser, the president. And yet the question “Who is Paul Frank?” is at the root of everything that’s happening between him and his former partners. When that started to get blurred, that’s when the problems started to happen.” It’s hard to imagine mistaking anyone else for Frank, with his thinning brown hair, lantern chin, hipster sideburns, and Popeye-esque anchor tattoos on each forearm. “I hear they’re all wearing T-shirts that say ‘We Are Paul Frank.’ Well, you’re Paul Frank Industries. “Those guys are saying Paul Frank is not a person,” says the designer, whose given name is Paul Frank Sunich. Theirs is the story of how three friends who spent a decade nurturing one man’s hobby into a $40-million-a-year empire let resentment and hurt feelings jeopardize everything they’ve worked for.ĭigging into a plate of macaroni and cheese at the Harbor House Café in the sleepy Southern California town of Huntington Beach, Frank says he knows when it all started to go wrong. The wise men are John Oswald and Ryan Heuser, Frank’s two partners in the astonishingly successful clothing-and-accessories company Paul Frank Industries. This is no fairy tale, but the saga of designer Paul Frank, one of the most unlikely fashion successes-and teen idols-of our time. Photograph by Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times. ![]() As the furniture below attests, Paul Frankl’s work is ready for its close-up.įind vintage Paul Frankl tables, dining chairs, case pieces and storage cabinets on 1stDibs.Designer Paul Frank and his creation Julius the monkey. In the 1940s, Frankl became one of the first designers to incorporate free-form, biomorphic shapes in his work, as well as novel upholstery fabrics such as denim and nubby wool.įrankl biographer Christopher Long argues that the designer’s easy, elegant aesthetic had an enormous influence on movie set design. (Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire were clients.) Fascinated by Asian arts, Frankl produced numerous pieces - tabletops with edges that curve upward sofas, chairs and other seating with rattan frames - inspired by Chinese and Japanese forms and materials. His designs became lighter and simpler and found an audience among the Hollywood élite. A later visually expressive line - the Speed chairs and sofas, which have a raked profile suggesting motion - links Frankl to Donald Deskey, Raymond Loewy and other creators of Streamline Moderne design.įrankl moved to Los Angeles in 1934 and luxuriated in the climate and lifestyle. Tall and narrow, the pieces have staggered shelves meant to mimic the setbacks of Manhattan office towers. Prolific and protean, Frankl would go on to design furnishings that are emblematic of nearly every key stylistic chord in American modernism, from the streamlined Art Deco to free-form organic shapes.įrankl's Skyscraper cabinets, bookcases and more - introduced in 1924 - are his earliest and best-known designs (and the work by which he is most often represented in institutions, such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art). Born in Vienna, Paul Frankl came to the United States in 1914 as part of a wave of Central European design luminaries - among them Kem Weber, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra - who were drawn by the energy and optimism of the American scene.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |