The Subtle and Intriguing Interiors of Paul Fortune

I did say subtle, didn’t I? While the above photo isn’t subtle, Paul sitting on the Rick Owens’ self-portrait / homage to Allen Jones’ infamous chair from 1969, his interiors are. They have a quiet luxury...I know, I hate that term too, but it perfectly describes Fortune’s work. His interiors are for people who are mostly famous, definitely rich, and those who don’t want to scream about what they own, and where or how they live. His interior work is so not what we see today in Architectural Digest. (Although I must say that while AD loved Paul’s work, and championed it, I’m referring more to its current obsession with celebrity, glitz, and the over-the-top bullshit interiors they mostly cover now. And yes, I am a subscriber). His work would be right at home in the newish Neptune Papers magazine which I am also obsessed with. Yes you have a 8 Million dollar painting, (or several of them) but it’s paired with a thrift store Blenko vase. The interiors look lived in, even when they are so perfect down to the very last detail. You especially see this in Paul’s apartments for Marc Jacobs. Paul designed Marc’s Paris place, his New York apartment, and was working on his latest gesamtkunstwerk in Rye, New York: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hoffman House (1959) that sits on the edge of Long Island Sound. Marc has publicly stated that he’s not ready to show anyone his latest abode just yet. Part of the reason I believe it’s still unfinished, and not ready for its close-up, is that his longtime and thoughtful collaborator Paul died in the middle of the project in 2020. When I told my wife Alex that I was going to write about Paul Fortune and that I had just recently discovered him, she gave me a side-eye and seemed surprised that he had just popped up on my radar. Strange yes, but I love when that happens, it’s like suddenly finding yourself walking down a side street in your neighborhood that you never knew existed, but it's been right under your nose the whole time. Anyway, Alex actually met Paul in Marc’s FLW house when she was working at Sotheby’s. She said he was very polite, reserved, and totally consumed with what he was doing. You can see this meticulousness in his interiors, yet despite the control, they still have a casual and inviting vibe that makes you want to crawl through the page/screen and into them.