You know a designer is on
to something when Lenny Kravitz, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber
are willing to make the trek up to Portland, Oregon, to commission
his services. The man in question is Michael Czysz, a 36-year-old
Portland native whose well publicized transformation of Kravitz's 1950's Miami
ranch house into a sleek, throbbing James Bond-esque den of seduction
has turned him into one of the most sought-after designers in
the entertainment industry.
Much admired for his playful sensibility, the flagrantly heterosexual
Czysz--who has been known to design kitchen sinks in the shape
of breasts and gets his kicks racing $60,000 handmade Italian
Aprilia bikes--seems to have tapped into an archetypal realm of
male fantasy and dedicated himself to making it real. "I
like things simple and bold and sexy as hell," the tall,
rangy designer says as he settles down in the living room of his
sprawling Mediterranean estate 20 minutes outside of Portland.
Dressed in head-to-toe black, with penetrating Windex-blue eyes
and a dark shock of hair that stands its ground in a stiff breeze,
Czysz (it's pronounced "sizz") has an intense, moody
sort of handsomeness. But it's softened by an infectious, almost
adolescent enthusiasm and a rap star's fondness for expressions
like "dope" and "the s---."
"I like taking risks, pushing things a little bit,"
says Czysz, 36. "I like finding out what clients are into
and then taking them way further down that road then they would
normally go. If someone sees a rosebush, I see 200 rosebushes--that
kind of thing."
Nowhere is this mind-set more
evident than in Whiskey Park,
the "Boston bar that opened last November, and which Czysz,
who designed it for nightclub guru Gerber, refers to as a "den
of chocolate love." Wet-looking brown patent leather and
mink covered pillows abound amid low-slung opium beds and bronze
mirrored ceilings. "When I was designing it, I kept thinking
of these dark bronze women with beautiful oiled skin and superlong
legs," Czysz says. Every fabric is a sensual experience,
and every corner seems designed to encourage seduction.
Which is exactly why Gerber hired him. "As soon as I saw
Lenny's house," Gerber says, "I knew [Czysz} was someone
I wanted to work with. His designs had a playful sort of sensuality
that I knew would work well in a nightclub."
Before long, Gerber had commissioned Czysz to work on a variety
of other projects, too. In addition to a Whiskey Park incarnation
in New Orleans called St.Pimp's, Gerber
has tapped Czysz to design everything from the bottles for his
new vodka brand to the renovation of the house he shares with
his wife, Cindy Crawford, in Malibu. Then there's the new W Hotel in Miami--Gerber is a partner in the
hotel group. "I think he's the Philippe Starck of our generation,"
Gerber says.
But the collaboration hasn't been without obstacles. "Working
with Rande and Cindy is definitely a challenge," Czysz says,
mainly because this is the first project they've done together,
and they each have their own style. Because of the way Cindy was
raised, she has a very traditional picture in her mind of what
success is. Rande has almost the opposite idea. He wants things
lower and sexier, so" --Czysz laughs--" I don't want
to say it's marriage counseling, but... at times it can be a little
tricky."
Crawford doesn't' deny it. " I always thought Michael's stuff
was amazing, but in the beginning it just seemed too edgy, too
impractical to work in a family house," she recalls. So Czysz
convinced the couple to spend a weekend with him and his family
in Portland, and by the end of the visit he had won Crawford over.
"He really inspired me to consider new ideas," she says,
" and to see how we could create a shared vision that we
both feel at home with."
Which is not to say that Crawford has given up on her fondness
for more traditional designs. Czysz describes the house project
as "a Hawaiian sugar plantation with a little Balinese flavor
thrown in," and Crawford says, "I'm always telling him,
'Michael, I'm just not as hip as you.' But the great thing about
him is that if you don't like one idea, he's got 50 more to throw
at you."
Getting Czysz to collaborate with Crawford's decorator and longtime
friend Michael Smith--who is overseeing some of the more practical
decorative details-- was more of a challenge. Gerber chuckles
at the memory: "Oh, yeah, it was tough at first. There are
definitely some egos involved."
Nobody ever claimed Czysz
doesn't have an ego. Indeed, the designer generally insists on
near-complete autonomy. He custom-makes 90 percent of the furniture
for every project and personally selects everything from the flatware
to the pillowcases. " I hate things that are half-assed,"
he says. "I really love being involved in every element of
a project, down to the tiniest detail." In the case of Kravitz's
Miami residence, he went so far as to pick out a silver Ferrari
and to custom-design a silver " Flying
V" Fender guitar to go with the house, Kravitz never
saw the place until it was finished.
"I trust Michael completely," Kravitz declares on the
phone from Miami. (Their friendship goes deep: Kravitz is the
godfather to Czysz's children.) "If Michael says this is
the way, then I'll go that way, because I know it will be the
s---."
But Czysz's perfectionist streak has caused him his fair share
of problems. Raised in what he refers to as the "completely
un-design-oriented" atmosphere of a trailer park outside
of Portland, he grew up fixating on the families yearly visits
to a design obsessed aunt's house in Laguna Beach, California.
"Man, I was so into her house," he laughs. "It
was all the Lucite and acrylic, and Bauhaus coffee table books--total
designery. One day I looked around and said, 'This is what I want,
man. This is what I want to do.'"
He studied architecture at Portland State University (where he
met his wife, artist Lisa Elorriaga), then spent a semester at
Parsons, which, he says, "was just crazy. I was intimidated
as hell. I mean, here I am, this kid from Portland; I know I was
good, but New York seemed like this whole other world. Anyway,
I got there and everyone was just f---ing around, going out nightclubbing.
I was like, this is a joke. Finally one teacher took me aside
and said, 'You should just get busy.' And that's what I did."
After Parson's, he moved to LA and began working in graphic design.
The Daily Grill restaurant hired him to create a new sign, and
within weeks he had convinced the owner to let him renovate the
entire place. Several months later he was in charge of design
for the whole chain. "That was it," he says. I had a
client who could give me a regular work, and I set off on my own
from there."
It was around this time that
he met Kravitz. The musician was doing what Czysz calls "
the starving-artist thing" in a neighboring loft downtown
when Czysz sold him his great-grandmother's 20-year-old Corvair.
Soon Kravitz began consulting Czysz on design ideas, and the friendship
was born. "Even though Michael's style was much more minimalist
then, you could see how talented he was,' Kravitz says. I think
to be simple and good takes genius, and Michael has it."
Czysz readily acknowledges Kravitz's influence. "When I first
met Lenny, I was in a much more Bauhaus kind of phase, and what
Lenny wanted was sexier, more sensual. It was still really simple
and bold, but it had a lot more funk." He chuckles. "He
kept saying, 'I want this place dope, I want it funky. Make sure
it's funky, okay? Don't make it too tight."
In following Kravitz's instructions, Czysz realized he had hit
on something, and in a sense he's been mining that vein ever since.
"Lenny and I wanted to do our own thing, make our own period,"
Czysz says. "And I think the fact that we blended to two
styles--that sort of austere minimalism with a funkier, more soulful
thing--is what makes it interesting."
His career was now booming
in LA, but in 1993 he decided to move back to Portland-a seemingly
odd choice for a designer who was just beginning to make a name
for himself. But as Czysz explains, "Both my wife and I are
from here. Our families are here. We just both felt more comfortable
here. We got sick of all the sun."
They lived in a downtown loft until 1999, when they relocated
to an enormous1920s Mediterranean house on two and a half "perfect
acres outside town. Though the house is considerable more low-key
than Czysz's usual design projects, there are, of course, traces
of his trademark sensuality--the opium bed on the loggia, the
deep velvet upholstered couches, the clusters of oversize candles,
the silver Porsche in the driveway. But there are also tricycles
and plenty of family snapshots. Czysz and Elorriaga have two sons,
ages three and one.) The house is not a showcase; it's a comfortable
space that Czysz created to contain both his home and his workplace,
and it shows.
"A couple of years ago, I realized that working in an office
was making my life hell," he explains. "I was working
really hard, but I wasn't getting enough time to see my kids,
so I just said, 'To hell with it, we are going to find the biggest
house in Portland, and we are going to do everything out of it'--kind
of like the Versace compound." He transformed the basement
into an office for his eight-person design team (the pool became
a conference room), and now he can just head upstairs to have
lunch with his sons. "I'm basically an introvert," Czysz
says. " I never leave the house except to go to the racetrack,
do a few errands or go to the airport, and I'm satisfied as hell
with that."
At some point, he admits, he would like to get the house "all
pimped out, " but at the moment his focus is on getting the
rest of the world "all pimped out first." And he has
the energy for it: "I want to do it all--houses, furniture,
bikes, watches, all of it." No wonder he's enamored of the
multitalented man he calls "the perfect designer, "
Philippe Starck. "He's a complete genius," Czysz says,
and then pauses and grins. "Of course, I'm going to kick
his ass someday. But in a humble way, you know?"
written by KIMBERLY CUTTER