Kim Hastreiter

0:00Debbie Millman: To me, right now, what we're going through, that I feel like I have to put art out in the universe. Artists have to, like, put the best art, the best inspiration out in the universe right now.

0:16Kim Hastreiter: From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

0:23Kim Hastreiter: On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with Kim Hastrider about New York City, art, magazines, and about breaking the internet.

0:40Debbie Millman: No one ever heard of paper, and in 24 hours, everyone knew paper in the whole world.

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2:49Kim Hastreiter: Kim Hastrider is a creator and a connector of worlds, as well as an editor, curator, collector, and catalyst who has spent more than four decades at the center of cultural emergence. As the co-founder and longtime editor of Paper Magazine, she built one of the most influential platforms documenting the intersection of art, fashion, music, and nightlife in downtown New York and beyond. She's also worked with everyone from Keith Haring to President Barack Obama, and her new book, Stuff, A New York Life of Cultural Chaos, tells the story of her life through the objects and people she has encountered and gathered along the way.

3:34Kim Hastreiter: Kim Hastrider, welcome to Design Matters. Thank you.

3:38Debbie Millman: I'm so excited to be here.

3:39Kim Hastreiter: Kim, I understand that you identify as both a loudmouth and a snob. Why is that? Why those two particular things?

3:50Debbie Millman: I think it has a little to do with DNA. I hate to tell you, but it's not a learned thing. But I am kind of stubborn, like my father was, and super opinionated. And also, the older I get, the more I get that way because the time is running out. I mean, now I'm kind of like in fast motion because I turn 70. When I turn 70, you know, you kind of see the end. And then I become like completely a maniac about like not wasting time. There's no transactional stuff. It all has to be like high bar. I have a high bar.

4:26Kim Hastreiter: Yeah. As I'm getting older and older and just right behind you, a couple of years behind you, everything becomes more urgent. Yeah. You grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, and by your own mother's account, she described you as a square suburban girl. How was that possible?

4:47Debbie Millman: I was just young. You know, I was, I don't know if you remember villager outfits, but, you know, I wore like villager outfits with high socks and like A-line skirts and like little circle pins. I went to high school, junior high school. I walked, it was in the suburbs. And so I had a lot of friends, but I wasn't, no one was kooky or like outrageous. And then, you know, it all happened when I went to when I left.

5:10Kim Hastreiter: Your mother was curious, political, intellectually hungry, and an avid reader of The New Yorker and The New York Times. What did you learn from watching her move through the world?

5:22Debbie Millman: Well, Crossword Puzzles. I mean, we did the Crossword Puzzle maniacally. And so my grandmother, I had a great grandmother too, my nana, her mother. And so, you know, when you're 17 and 16, you don't register any of this stuff. So you register it later on and you look back and you're like, oh my God, she would read about stuff. She'd read about an artist, George Rickey, for example. And she became obsessed. She read about him in The New Yorker. And then we had to schlep up to Connecticut with my father, made my father drive us all to Connecticut to buy a sculpture. You know, it was like a thousand dollars in those days.

5:58Debbie Millman: But George Rickey did these beautiful, I don't know if you know his work, but he did these beautiful sculptures that were kinetic. And, you know, I grew up with the George Rickey and she always went to the restaurant. She always knew everything. Like we always went to the city. We were a half hour outside of the city in New Jersey. So we're very close to New York. And she always wanted to live in New York. and she always wanted to live in the Butterfield House, which was on 12th Street, and she took classes at the new school. She was always in the city. So it was just kind of like part of the deal.

6:27Debbie Millman: My father was completely eccentric. He had a jewelry store in Newark, New Jersey, that my grandfather started. And my mother started, she really was like, she wanted to be a psychologist or psychiatrist, but it was in those days. You know, you raised your kids, you were in the suburbs, but the second she could leave, they did.

6:47Kim Hastreiter: I read two different descriptions that you spoke about your father, and both of them were really wonderful. You stated that he was utterly unembarrassed by himself and that he also would have driven you to the moon if you asked. How did that kind of unconditional support, both internally and externally, shape your sense of possibility?

7:13Debbie Millman: I mean, he was just, both of them, anything I did, it could be like completely crazy. They were like, how can we help? Like, what can we do? And my father would like, one time when I started paper in my house the first year, he calls me up urgently, like before cell phones, we had like dial phones. And he's like, Kim, I was just on 12th Street. And Women's Wear Daily used to be on 12th Street, Fairchild it was called. He said, they're moving and they have all these desks on the street. There's those huge gray steel desks. He said, there's like 20 of them. You want them? I was like, yes. So he went and like basically stood there for the whole day guarding them because he wanted them.

7:56Debbie Millman: And then we got like a mover and we moved them all into Lisbonard Street into my loft. And I couldn't even walk. It was so many desks. And then he used to go to, when I started paper, he would go to all the newsstands and torture them, like completely, because he could be torture. And he'd make them, he's like, what do you think of this newspaper? And it was a poster. It was like a zine, you know? Yeah, it was a broad sheet, right? Yeah, and the news dealers would look at him like, who is this? And he'd say, well, I think it should be here. And he would hang it like in front. So he was my like man on the streets.

8:28Debbie Millman: He would go to every news store. They used to have magazine stores in every newsstand. There used to be newsstands and make it and put it in the front, like all throughout the village and the East Village and the West Village and Soho. He was like a maniac.

8:42Kim Hastreiter: Well, he did a really good job because that's where I lived and hung out. And I always saw it front and center in the newsstands because I'd always be looking at what was happening in the little newsstands.

8:52Debbie Millman: But he was very eccentric. I had a very eccentric father. And when you're young, you're completely embarrassed. He was embarrassed. Oh, my God. I was embarrassed by him, so embarrassed, because he would do these crazy things, especially with food. If you were in a restaurant, like he would like, I can't even tell you what he would do in a restaurant. Like we used to go to this restaurant every Sunday. It was called Don's. It was like a hamburger restaurant. He would take the pickles and then he would dip them in ice water. Then he would dry them all off. We would have finished already. And he would take the coleslaw and then he would drain the coleslaw.

9:24Debbie Millman: He'd ask for an extra dish and then he'd have a big dish of coleslaw juice. and then he'd make the waiter take it away all before. I mean, he was like crazy. And then he would take the hamburger, put napkins on top. He would take the bun off and then he'd squeeze the juice out of the hand. Like he was crazy, my father. And so I was like embarrassed completely.

9:43Kim Hastreiter: My father once threw a plate of salad across the room in a restaurant just for the fun of it. Not because he was angry. He could do things like that when he was, oh, it was really, well, he was very complicated. He was both eccentric and also very stern. And so that combination always kept me sort of on my toes. But I do think that it inspired me to be much more aware of my surroundings than I might have ordinarily been. And that's a good thing.

10:14Debbie Millman: The weirdest thing about my father, the best thing that I always loved, was that he lived in his own universe and people were all the same. I would catch him sometimes talking to a drag queen for like a half hour. He had no idea it was a drag queen, nor did he care. But it was a drag queen in full drag. And he would just talk to them the same way he would talk to the guy in the farmer's market that sold the tomatoes. And he would talk to everyone equally. He never thought there was a difference between people.

10:44Kim Hastreiter: So he didn't have any judgment of himself or others. Or us. And that's incredible. That kind of unconditional support never goes away. I think once that is instilled in you at a young age, good job, Mr. Housewriter. Good job. Your childhood home was filled with carefully curated design, Dansk flatware, Nakashima furniture, Jack Lenore Larson textiles. Did you understand at that time how taste was a bit of a language?

11:18Debbie Millman: Well, from my mother. My mother had really good taste. And so she had this friend named Milton Klein, who was a really great architect from South Orange, New Jersey. And so she loved him and she loved his taste. She thought he had the best taste. And my grandmother also had really good taste. So she was brought up with good stuff. And my mother loved clothes. She loved fashion. She always was like kind of chic. And my grandmother had a clothing store. She sold Glamor Cardle. That was her friend. I mean, you know, so we always ate off of Dansk silverware. It's called Variation V, and it's designed—I forget who it's designed by.

11:52Debbie Millman: It's like my favorite knives, forks, and spoons. You still have them, right? Oh, yeah. I eat off them. I have them. I bought more of them. I have, like, service for, like, 30 of those. And then all the dance enamel stuff, and then Nakashima. She fell in love with Nakashima because she, like, read about him in The New Yorker, and then she made my father slip to, like, Pennsylvania to meet him. And I didn't know what she was talking about, but she would come back and she had bought like the table, the chairs, the shell, you know, all this Nakashima stuff. And my father, because he was so open, you know, she was definitely bossy, my mother.

12:25Debbie Millman: And so she would bought, he would just do whatever she wanted, you know. So, okay, we'll go. And he didn't have any clue, but he would drive her and he would go with her. And what else did she collect? And she got the George Wicke sculpture, which is like in the Museum of Modern Art Garden now, his sculpture. He's a famous sculptor. I still have it in my house. It's a sculpture. It's a little sculpture. And my dog used to knock it over all the time and all the little things would come out because it was all about balance. The sculpture was all about balance. So we'd have to schlep up to Connecticut to get him to redo everything like a hundred times.

13:01Kim Hastreiter: Now, you said that you collected crocheted clown dolls instead of Barbies as you were growing up.

13:08Debbie Millman: Well, no, not when I was growing up. That was after I grew up when I was in school. But when I was growing up, I had this thing called a Ginny doll. It was before, you know, and I had a monkey. But not a real monkey. No, a stuffed monkey named Flop Ears. I didn't really have a lot of dolls. And then I always liked art classes in school. I played tennis. I liked sports. I mean, I was just like, you know, I used to like gab on the phone with my friends. Like as a teenager, we would, my princess phone and my bedroom, you know. But I wasn't like a crazy teenager.

13:43Kim Hastreiter: You chose to go to Washington University in St. Louis in 1969 and arrived at Washington University dressed in Peter Pan collars and penny loafers. Why that school and what did you think you wanted to do professionally at that point?

13:58Debbie Millman: No, it was really pretty. That's why you chose it? That's the only reason. Yeah, it had this beautiful quadrangle. I was like, oh, I loved how it looked. I only went there because of how it looked. I had no idea. I applied to all these different schools, and that was the one I went to. You know, I didn't know I was doing what's it called, like, just general arts and sciences, and I took all these classes, and I was like, I was kind of like bored. But then I met art students, and I started becoming more like, there was this art school down the hill, there was a hill, and I decided I wanted to go to art school.

14:33Debbie Millman: So I went to Europe, traveled around Europe, and then went to art school there for just like one semester. And then I was like sick of it already. And then I went to Nova Scotia.

14:43Kim Hastreiter: You protested the Vietnam War. Yeah.

14:46Debbie Millman: So when I arrived at, you know, 1969 when you went to college, that's when Kent State happened. And it was like a really wild year. So my first year of college was half shut down. The college shut down. I mean, Washington University was like a huge youth quake of revolution. And we took over the ROTC building, like climbing through windows. I mean, it was wild. I think you just narrowly avoided going to jail. Yes, I did. And I had friends that went to jail and we were all like smoking pot and taking acid. And then I remember my friends all went to jail because they got pot sent to them in a package.

15:25Debbie Millman: I had friends that went to federal prison also for doing this radical revolutionary stuff. And the girl got killed in Kent State, and that was a big deal. So really, it was a crazy year. What made you decide to apply to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design? Because I was at art school. I went to art school at Washington University. But it was more like painting and drawing. And I wasn't into that. But I was really getting into, like, my family lived in New York. So I would come back. My friends were in New York, and I would just always come back to New York and go to the galleries. And I just started reading avidly like Art Forum.

16:03Debbie Millman: Art Forum was kind of like my Bible. And they kept talking about this school called Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, which most people haven't heard of. If you are in the art world, it was a really major special place. It was this crazy art school that existed. And it was in Canada. It was in Nova Scotia. And it was completely no classes. It was like the most avant-garde conceptual art. Like amazing people taught there. Like Joseph Boyce taught there. R. Pink taught there. I mean amazing. It was international. They had tons of money. And I applied and I got in because I was doing this body of work.

16:42Debbie Millman: My work was like already like I had a thing that I was doing. You're doing these really large metal paintings. Yeah, with metal dust, yeah. Yeah. And it was inspired by tantric art. And then I started kind of like the same essence. I started doing these performances and these kind of installations. And my work was very specific. And I got in. And it was like$100 a semester. It was really cheap. And my parents were like, okay, go there. You know, that's fine. And I got a pickup truck and I drove to Nova Scotia by myself. And, like, I remember Danielle Buren was one of my teachers. I mean, it was like— Wasn't Vito Acconci one?

17:20Debbie Millman: Vito was there. I was his intern. Because a lot of those people also worked at CalArts. They were connected. CalArts was connected to Nova Scotia in those days.

17:29Kim Hastreiter: How did that environment shape your understanding of what art and artists could be?

17:34Debbie Millman: Huge. Because there were no classes. So all they would do, they had so much money, they would bring artists in, and they would do these, like, kind of seminars. And I met, like, I don't know if you know who R. Pink was from East Germany. I mean, this is before the wall came down. It was like we had Envito and then all of the Art of Povera people. Like, I don't know if you know that group of artists. Like, they were from Italy and they were doing, like, conceptual art. And, like, Richard Serra was there and Robert Smithson was there. And, like, Eva Hess had already died, but she was one of my favorite artists.

18:10Debbie Millman: She was a really great sculptor who died very young. And then Jonas Mekas taught me there. I met him there. I mean, so it was like every single. And then they would all come in because Nova Scotia had a tamarind press. So they had so much money. They would print books for artists and they would do series of lithographs for artists. And if you came and all you had to do was teach and you could get a free book published or like a series of lithographs printed, you know. So all these great artists from all over the world, Klaus Oldenburg even came, I think, and the great artists from Europe, everywhere came there.

18:50Debbie Millman: And a lot of them were more conceptual artists from that moment. Art Bovera was like this movement in Italy that was like a certain movement. If you look it up, there's all these artists that are attached to it. Yanis Kunalis and, you know, there was amazing art. So I really like my mind was completely blown. And from there you went to CalArts. Yeah, because that was kind of the logical thing. So like Laurie Anderson and all those people, all the CalArts people would come to Nova Scotia and then Nova Scotia people would go there.

19:23Kim Hastreiter: And you studied with John Baldessari, who I know is also your neighbor. You came deeply immersed in fine art, but you said you longed for more fun than the art world was offering. What fun did you feel was missing?

19:38Debbie Millman: I just felt like, oh my, I mean, you know, I loved art and I love making art, but I mean, I just kept thinking like, there is more than just this. So I met this guy, Joey Arias, who's like a performer who I'm actually trying right this minute, I'm going to produce this amazing extravaganza musical show that's going to come out next year of his work. We're best friends. And I met him, and he was so amazing. And then I met this whole group of people that went clubbing, and they just were outrageous. And then they just kind of took me under the wing. And I would be going to CalArts every day, which was like an hour drive on the freeway.

20:17Debbie Millman: But I would start to spend time with them. And then they would show me. We started going to thrift stores. I mean, I just fell in love with these people. So I had a dual life. And then I would bring Joey up to CalArts, and they all looked at me like, what? Like they didn't get it. But then some of them did get it. There were some really great artists and all the women at CalArts, just so you know, when we graduated, not one woman got into a gallery. It was like this whole, I have that, that's what really set me off. But, you know, we thought everything was about the work. And if you did great work, you would get in a gallery.

20:50Debbie Millman: And John was really a great teacher. He really loved my work. And he was a great teacher. And He was very generous. He never competed with his students, and he helped the students that he respected their work. He really helped us.

21:04Kim Hastreiter: Next, you decided to move to New York City. So you left CalArts with a master's degree, loaded your wagon, which you called a dragon wagon, with your massive paintings, and you drove back to New York with Joey. And you stated that you were determined to become the artist of your imagination. What did you think that life would look like?

21:25Debbie Millman: Well, John kept telling me, like, I'll get you a gallery. I'll get you into the Whitney program. Like, John was really positive. Like, don't worry, I'm going to take care of you. And so he kind of got me excited. And I knew I was going to move to New York because New York was the only place the art world was. California didn't really have an art world at that point. I knew I wanted to move there. And that's where I was from. And my parents still lived in New Jersey at that point. They were just getting ready to move to New York. But it just felt the right thing. I had to go to New York. And so John gave me all this courage.

21:54Debbie Millman: And then, you know, you get there and I'm kind of like, okay, what do I do? Well, I don't have money. I had to get a job. So Joey wasn't even going to stay. He was just helping me drive, right? We went to New Jersey. We stayed in New Jersey. My mother welcomed us. And my mother had met Joey when I graduated and fell in love with him. So she already had met him because I had this crazy college graduation, CalArts, with like Jack Lemmon did the speech. I mean, it was like crazy. And my sister went to Yale, so my parents had just had their back graduation with, like, right, the marching and the, like, thing and the caps and gown.

22:28Debbie Millman: And then she came to mine, and, like, when we got her diplomas, this giant inflatable penis went up. And it was, like, in the middle of the desert, and there was Balinese monkey chanters that were, like, leading the procession. And then Jack Lemmon, the comedian, like, did the speech. I mean, it was so wild. And then I had my graduation lunch at Musso Frank's, which is my fun. And Joey had this Cadillac, so he fell in love. My mother fell in love with Joey. And she was like, who are these? She just loved it. So anyway, and then I moved to New York, and I had to move out of the apartment out through my window because my friend Mary Kay wanted my apartment.

23:04Debbie Millman: And so Joey, we pulled out my truck. I was in 3rd Street in Santa Monica in this building that's still there. And my landlady, kind of the manager, lived next door to me. I was on the second floor. And I was kind of like, how are we going to move her in? Because it's not really legal. So I said, we're in the middle of the night. I'm going to move out and you're going to move in at like 3 in the morning. And then the landlady, you're just going to be there. And like she won't even know anything happened. I'm like that. Of course, she got caught finally, eventually. But I moved out through the window.

23:38Debbie Millman: Joey helped me because he was driving. And we moved all my stuff, my paintings, all my belongings out the window into my truck. and then Mary Kay came and moved everything through the window into the apartment. I mean, it was crazy.

23:50Kim Hastreiter: So you've just given me the perfect opportunity to bring up renting. It might not have been your first apartment, but it was certainly one of your first apartments. And this is the way you described it. The so-called realtor woke me up from a deep sleep at 2 a.m. on a weekday. Hello, Kim. This is Ellen from Garrett's and Mansions. Sorry for waking you like this, but I think I found you an apartment. It's a one-bedroom for$140 a month on Prince and West Broadway. The only thing is you have to come see it right now. And if you want it, I need three months up front and a$500 cash fee for my friend who will transfer his lease to your name at 9 a.m.

24:33Kim Hastreiter: this morning.

24:35Debbie Millman: What happened next? So in New York, it's always like a thing to get an apartment, please. I mean, even today, people are like, you know, people wait in line. To get an apartment in New York. So I had been looking for like a few months. And I even got an apartment on Carmine Street because you're so hysterical that you know you have to take it right then. And I even took an apartment on Carmine Street. And then I went home and cried because I saw there was a bullet going through the front door. And there was no kitchen. Had no kitchen. It didn't even have a toilet. I mean, I was like, what did I just do?

25:08Debbie Millman: And my father, it was like mafia. My father had to go talk to the mafia landlord and kind of get me out of it. So that had already happened. So this, and I went to this girl who was like a young girl from Garretson Mansions. It was like a little realtor. And she knew she got it. $140 was my budget. You know, I want to live in an apartment. So all of a sudden, I've been looking, looking, looking, looking. So when she woke me up, I literally had to slap my face awake. And I was like, okay. She's like, I'll come pick you up. And we have to meet the guy who's going to say you're his cousin. Right?

25:44Debbie Millman: So she picks me up at like in the middle of the night. I was subletting on like 67th Street or something. And then we go in her little Volkswagen to Hell's Kitchen, which in the 70s was scary. What's Hell's Kitchen? That's why it was called Hell's Kitchen. And he was a punk in a punk band. And he had this basement in a punk band that he was practicing in. It was like 3 in the morning. And we had to go and meet him, this kid, this punk guy. I had to give him$500 because he was like, that was like, the best is that Ellen from Garrison Mansion, she had already taken this apartment and given him the$500 actually because she wanted it.

26:25Debbie Millman: But then she found something better. So she had to dump it. So she got me. So I had to actually give her the$500 because she had already get, you know, it was like that. This is so New York. And then she said, well, when does the bank open? So 8 in the morning, I was at the bank. I withdrew the money, like$3 times$440 plus the$500 I had to give her. And then by 9 o 'clock, we had to go to the appointment with the landlady who turned out. I walked in, and she lived in those buildings that have the Picasso sculpture in Greenwich Village on Houston Street. You know those two buildings that are NYU?

27:03Debbie Millman: you, that's where she lived, or that's where her office was. And she was the sweetest, kind of not hippie, but she had a bun. She was kind of elderly, but she had this sign behind her that war is not healthy for children. Other living things. Yeah. She had like Sister Corita. I couldn't believe it. And she was so naive. And the guy was like, this is my cousin, Kim, and I want to transfer my lease to her. She's like, okay. And it was all, it took like 15 minutes. It was done. I got the apartment. And I had to, by the way, in the middle of the night, go look at the apartment because I said, I have to see it.

27:37Debbie Millman: So Ellen from Garrison Mansion took me there. And it was a fifth floor walk up on West Broadway and Prince. The tub was in the kitchen. I went in. There was no electricity. It had been turned off. There were people sleeping on the floor. When I went to look at the apartment, no lights. And I was like tiptoeing trying to see. There was like a toilet room. And I just remember going in the toilet room and I flushed and it worked. And then I saw a tub. And there was a sink. And it was one bedroom. That was the best. It had a bedroom. Yeah, for$140. Yeah. So I had seen it, and I was like, I'll take it.

28:10Because I was like, you're desperate when you need that apartment.

28:14Kim Hastreiter: Yeah, yeah. Joey got a job selling clothes at Fiorucci, one of the great stores of all time. That's where he got you a leopard dress that you apparently wore every single night to go out clubbing. At that time, I believe you were a salesperson at Betsy Bunkinini. Yes. The boutique located on Madison Avenue that Betsy Johnson owned with two of her friends. And there you waited on customers including Nora Ephron, Barbara Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who I believe stated that you were her favorite salesperson.

28:46Debbie Millman: Well, no, Nora. Nora Ephron. I was Nora's favorite. Jackie Kennedy used to come in and I was her salesperson. She always would ask me. She was more like shy. And she was the only one that we were allowed to like send clothes for her to try on that because it was a communal dressing room and she didn't want to like get undressed in front of people. But all the other stars got undressed in front of people. Nora Ephron was the best. I loved her the best. And she would invite me to her house and everything. But Jackie Kennedy used to ask me like questions like with the dear eyes like, is navy blue an N?

29:19Debbie Millman: Like that, the craziest question. I mean, I was kind of like, and I remember, like, she wrote down her address. I put it in the book and her phone number and everything, and we would deliver the stuff. And then what she didn't want, she would bring it back.

29:32Kim Hastreiter: While walking to work from the subway, you were wearing a fringed Castel Baja coat made from a Hudson Bay blanket. You were spotted by the legendary New York Times-style photographer Bill Cunningham, who took your picture. That began a lifelong friendship. Did the picture ever end up in The Times?

29:56Debbie Millman: Yes, definitely. It's actually in his book. But he would always be standing on Madison Avenue and 60th Street, I think 60th. And I would get out of that subway, take the Prince Street subway, because I lived on Prince Street and West Broadway. And then I would walk up Madison Avenue to 64th where the store was. And that store was like a really kooky store. It was owned, had a lot of money because one of the partners, I think, was a Rockefeller. But it was three very kooky girls, one of them, Betsy Johnson, one of them, Bunky, who I love. She was like my boss. And another one, Nini, who never, I don't know where she went.

30:32Debbie Millman: But they used to really buy avant-garde clothes, like Zandra Rhodes and like crazy. They were like buying like Kanzai Yamamoto. And Bunky loved like crazy clothes. And she would buy, like, people would come schlepping with, like, handmade sweaters, and she would buy them. She was, like, eccentric. And she always hired artists to do the windows and to be salesgirls. And then all these women would come and shop there that loved Betsy Bancanini. They were hooked on Betsy Bancanini because it was eccentric and it was always one of a kinds. And they always had kooky salesgirls, but it was expensive.

31:08Debbie Millman: It was, like, so it was fancy. And they'd all get undressed in this big dressing room, like everybody.

31:13Kim Hastreiter: Just envisioning like Nora and Barbara. Yeah, I'm telling you. Everybody just stripping down.

31:18Debbie Millman: Just like a lot of really important women were there.

31:21Kim Hastreiter: You and Bill became fast friends. Yes. And he told you about a publication titled The Soho Weekly News.

31:27Debbie Millman: Well, I knew that because I lived downtown. So that was my Bible, The Soho News. That was my Bible because they didn't have computers. So we would find out what to do. And we lived for The Soho News. But he told you about a job there. A job. Sorry about that. Yes.

31:38Kim Hastreiter: And he wanted you to take a job as a style editor. What do you think he saw in you at that time? Because you hadn't any experience. All he wanted, they wanted to hire him.

31:48Debbie Millman: He didn't want the job. He had to find someone else and convince them to hire someone else. That's what I realized later. But I was like a downtown girl. He knew me from downtown because he used to go to the flea markets. I dressed crazy. And he kept saying, you'll be perfect. And you don't want to keep selling clothes, do you, Kim? He said, you're just perfect for them. But they wanted him. They didn't want me. So he had to, like, hustle them, and he told them they had to hire me, and they hired me because of him.

32:16Kim Hastreiter: You were responsible for filling 10 pages a week without any prior experience. How did you go about fulfilling your obligation in that way?

32:26Debbie Millman: Well, just so you know, I also had this friend from CalArts named Bronca, so I kind of brought her along to be, like, a co-editor because I was kind of like, I don't know if I could do this myself. And she didn't want to work selling clothes either. So we split the salary. So it was Kim and Bronco. We were like a team. So I did have that, and that kind of gave me more confidence that I wasn't doing it all by myself. I had no idea. I said to Bill, like, I'm not a journalist. I don't know what – I'm an artist. He said, oh, you'll be perfect. You know, he made me do it. And I was kind of like, I don't want to – I'm not happy, like, selling clothes.

33:00Debbie Millman: I don't want to do that. So I'll try it. And also I love the Soho News. So I went, and it was really like a crazy, wonderful place that was self-run, run all these crazy people. People bring their babies. Everyone was smoking pot in the office. We didn't get there till one in the afternoon because we were at the mug club all night. And all the people in town would come there. I remember when the sex pistols were in town, they would come in. It was just an amazing place. And then this artist came in one day. He hated his review, and he chopped his finger off it. I read that in your book. I couldn't believe that story.

33:36Kim Hastreiter: And then they tried to sew it back on and it didn't take.

33:40Debbie Millman: And there's this whole, you're always like listening to people snorting Coke in the neck because the walls didn't go to the ceiling. And then everyone had like green hair, blue hair. People brought their babies and had these dangling things for the babies, like the typesetter because you had to typeset. And one time, like, David and I, my partner, David, who I met at the Soho News, we went to Odeon for dinner, and this waitress came up to me. She goes like, oh, I just wanted to tell you that I was a baby in the Soho News office. My mother did the typesetting. I was like, oh, my God. She was one of the dangling babies.

34:13Debbie Millman: You know those things that dangle?

34:16Kim Hastreiter: I imagine them sort of hanging from the pipes at the top by the podiums that held up the wall.

34:22Debbie Millman: And we grew pot in the window on Broadway. We had pot plants. They had no idea.

34:28Kim Hastreiter: When Soho News folded, you and David Hershkovits chose to start your own magazine. Tell me, if you can, about that first conversation. Like, you and David, who said it to who?

34:43Debbie Millman: Well, David was kind of like, first of all, Soho was like nothing. And then all of a sudden, it started having restaurants. It was like kind of like the hottest new thing. And these stupid people from England, the reason why it closed was these stupid people from England bought it from the original guy. They were like Murdoch type people. It was called Lord Harnsworth. It was like he owned, they owned like the Daily Mail or something hideous. And they really didn't know what they bought. Someone told them to buy it and they bought it. And one day these English people arrived and everyone announced, oh, they sold the Soho News.

35:21Debbie Millman: And they arrived. They were all wearing suits. And they came at 9 in the morning. And no one's there until like 1. And they were freaking out. And then we all freaked out. We were like, what? Who are these people? And then they came in my office and started giving me notes to go to the Ralph Lauren show. And I was kind of like, no, that isn't what we do here. And so we had this rigged rebellion. And all the yippies, there were all these yippies that worked there. They were like really radical. More intense than hippies. Cooper, Burr, these really famous yippies all worked there. And they got a union.

35:54Debbie Millman: They said, we're going to unionize. So then all these union people came in. We didn't like that. It was crazy. And these English people were like, where is everybody? And we were like, well, we don't come in until – and then the babies and the green hair and all the crazy shit, they were like, oh, we made a big mistake. So they just shut it down one day. They were only there for six months. And then we didn't have jobs. But David, he was the one that said, okay, Soho's, they are so stupid. They like closed the thing that was just on the cusp of becoming a big thing. So David said, we have to like do a new weekly.

36:27Debbie Millman: We have to do a new weekly. So David, it was David's idea, not my idea, to do a weekly. So I said, I think right now we need to have style, but let's make it stylish. Because the village voice is like so ugly and nobody wants it. And I think we could even go further with style. And it has to look good and look chic. So he was like, okay, so that's how we did it. I kind of convinced him to let me be his partner. Yeah.

36:50Kim Hastreiter: You laid out early issues of paper secretly at the New York Times overnight. How did you end up there? And what did that clandestine beginning give the magazine?

36:59Debbie Millman: Well, we tried to raise money for like two years. Everyone was like, well, what is it? What kind of magazine? Is it a music magazine? Well, not really. Is it a fashion magazine? You know, no one understood what was going on. But there was this explosion of culture. And we wanted to be that. and we wanted to really do a weekly, not a monthly. So anyway, I met this art director named Richard Wigand, who was at the New York Times, and he actually, they hired him to kind of like do my special sections at the Soho News. And he was kind of a kooky, he was avant-garde, but he was, looked really straight, like he passed, but he was crazy.

37:37Debbie Millman: He looked, wore a suit and tie and everything, but he was English, you know, so he was that kind of crazy. And we became friends. He loved me and I loved him. And so I called Richard. I was like, we want to do this newspaper. What do you think? He's like, oh, let me come and look. Because you could bring him to a meeting and people would be like impressed because he was at the New York Times. And he worked at the New York Times full time. And he was the art director. So he came and he like said, OK, I'll do it, you know, for free. Everybody was for free. And then he said, oh, I want to bring in my friend Lucy, Lucy Sisman, this art director.

38:10Debbie Millman: So I was like, OK. So we started having meetings, and then David Herskovitz, my partner, came in and had this Michael Jackson poster. He said, maybe we should just do a poster. It's like one piece of paper. And we were like, we just have to do something because we'd been talking about it for so long. And I said, we should call it paper because there was this whole postmodern thing that was going on with Gaetano. All that stuff I hate from Italy was like the big rage, like Gaetano Pesce. And it was like this aesthetic that every magazine had and every furniture and every fashion. It was hideous to me.

38:43Debbie Millman: I hated it. Really ugly stuff. But it was like of the moment. But then Agnes B. opened up. And I died over Agnes B. I was like, this is the future. It was kind of generic, black and white, plain. I said, that's what I want paper to look like, okay? So Lucy went back and I said, let's call it paper because then it could be a different sort of paper every month. It could be like a generic because I loved the food, generic food in the supermarket in those days. And I did a whole piece on generic food for the Soho News. I did because they used to have generic food in the supermarket, black and white, just called spaghetti, just called coffee.

39:22Debbie Millman: Tomato sauce. Yeah, it was fabulous. I collected it. I did a whole thing on it. And so I said, let's do, call it paper and make it black and white like Agnes B. So she came up with this amazing design. And it wasn't even a poster. It was like a magazine. I have the prototype. It's outrageous. You'll die. You have to come to my house. I have to see it. I have to see it. You'll go crazy at my archives. I have the best archives. So anyway, I went to a printer on 7th at Varick Street, which is where everything, well, the printers were. And it was like$3 ,000 to print, I think. And we had the distributor and everything.

39:55Debbie Millman: And so we decided it was cheaper. All we could print was 16 pages for$3 ,000. So we decided, that's how David was, let's just make a poster instead of like cutting it because 16 page magazine is weak. You know, a poster is cuter. So we took these giant pictures and we filled in, that was Lucy's idea and Richard's, like they did this concept of like working around these big pictures and it was really beautiful. It was really like amazing. And we each put in$1 ,000, the four of us. And then we printed the first one and I went and sold ads for$250 each. There were these squares and it was like, do you receive a paper, an early paper?

40:34Debbie Millman: And the second one they'd have to pay for. I said, I'll give you the first one. But I went to all my friends. So the Pyramid, Agnes B. took an ad, Screaming Mimi's. Odeon, didn't they also? Yeah. Well, that was a little bit later. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was a big. Odeon was big. And same with Indochene. And all of them are still friends. The Pyramid Club, Dan Seteria, I love the Pyramid. They all advertised. There was only room for 20 ads. So that's how it started. And we're in my house. We did it on Spenard Street. Your apartment was the first headquarters. And then the first few issues, though, we did in the New York Times, because that was like Lucy and Richard both worked in the New York Times.

41:15Debbie Millman: So they had jobs there. So we would go on the weekends. They would sneak us in. And we learned how to, like, we would pay off the typesetter. We would typeset everything there. David would sit in the cafeteria, which was on the same floor, and they used to feed the homeless, but they also, Bill Cunningham, worked at the New York Times. And he was always there. And he's like, what are you doing here? And we told him. He was the only one we told because we were sneaking around. We were in the New York Times for the weekend. We would stay up all night and stay there. One time, Carrie Donovan, who was the fashion editor, came in, and we had to be pushed into a closet with all the boards because there was big boards and matte knives.

41:52Debbie Millman: It was like... Yeah, everybody worked on drafting tables, right? And then they had this system of typesetting. In the New York Times, there are these tubes that you would put the copy in and it would go like... Yeah, exactly. What is that? Like some kind of vacuum thing. We'd have to typeset the whole thing. David would proofread it in the cafeteria and then we'd do the corrections and then we would have to un-typeset. We have to erase it by the morning when they all showed up for work. And we would be giving money to all the, like, the photostat people. I mean, it was totally crazy, like, guerrilla.

42:28Debbie Millman: And the New York Times, I had my ads delivered there. People thought we worked there. Well, you did. Did they ever find out while you were doing it? Well, the best is I finally, one time at Paper, like when Paper was 20 years old, I found, I caught a girl who worked for me, this Spanish girl, doing a magazine out of paper. Isn't that the sweetest? So she had been doing the same thing what we were doing, but she was doing it out of paper. She was doing like a Spanish language, like hipster magazine, some kind of zine, you know. And I died when I like found out. She was so scared we were going to get, she was just, I think she was an intern or somebody's, whatever.

43:09Debbie Millman: She wasn't making a lot, hardly any money, but she was doing what we did. She came in the middle of the night. She used all our... I was like, you have to know. So I told her the story. I loved it. She was so scared when we caught her. And I was like, oh, you know, I have a good story for you. And then I never really... I wrote about it. I don't think I ever wrote about it in paper, but I wrote about it in my book.

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46:00Kim Hastreiter: You ran paper for 33 years. And in that time, you did more than publish a magazine. You created a living archive of cultural emergence. Paper documented and amplified the collision of art, fashion, music, nightlife, and politics long before mainstream media recognized their convergence. And you championed unknown artists, designers, performers before they became institutions.

46:29Debbie Millman: Writers, too. We had great writers.

46:30Kim Hastreiter: You preserved the radical DNA of the 1970s and 80s downtown New York, even as the magazine navigated digital virality and mass attention. You functioned as the editor, the connector, the cultural anthropologist and instigator, building a magazine that not merely reported on culture, but actively helped create it. But you also followed Bill Cunningham's advice to you, which was to never sell out. How did you manage to do that?

47:05Debbie Millman: One thing Bill's mantra was, and even when he caught us at the New York Times, he was like, print on cheap paper. Don't ever, like, go fancy. Don't ever get glossy paper. He said, you'll be a slave and you'll lose your freedom. And he always, like, that was his mantra to us. Don't sell out. Don't get your prices too high. Don't go fancy on me. Keep it newsprint. Keep it cheap. And none of us ever made money. You know, when we started paying writers, it was like the biggest deal. But we never paid. But people loved. We all worked so hard. And we made this thing that was so amazing that we had these amazing people writing for us and photographing for everyone.

47:45Debbie Millman: And it was like a communal art piece. We never used journalists. We weren't journalists. And so we would just, if there was a weird kind of underground genre of like movies that this guy was like an expert at, we would teach him how to write, you know. David would teach him how to write. I mean, Bell Hooks wrote a column for us. Yeah, I mean, we had Linda Yablonski wrote a column for us. I mean, we had the first AIDS column. I mean, we lost so many people during the AIDS epidemic from paper. But we really had complete freedom. And Bill always reminded us, don't sell out. Over the years, like we almost went bankrupt like a lot of times.

48:25Debbie Millman: And we were like trying to raise money. And then we got money from friends. Like little people donated like$5 ,000, you know, that kind of thing to make us survive. But no one ever would give us money. I have all the rejection letters from every company. Cy Newhouse used to write me letters. He loved paper.

48:43Kim Hastreiter: I want to talk about some of the artists you championed before they were famous and how you work with them and supported their work. You invested in artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat well before the market validated them. In fact, you felt so strongly about Keith Haring, you bought several pieces with a loan from your mother, which you paid back in$15 installments. I love that. What gave you the sense that they were both destined for greatness? You've recognized so many people before. You introduced the world to so many people. What gave you the sense that these were the people to bet on?

49:21Debbie Millman: Well, in my early, early years in St. Louis, I had this friend named Michael Green who was like really good taste. And he was like amazing. He was kind of like he died of AIDS. But he would always lecture me on like mediocrity versus like greatness. And he was like, Kim, if you're going to buy a pencil, don't just buy a pencil. Buy the best pencil. Like find the best of everything. Don't ever buy anything that's not the best. And I always practiced that. So if I was going to buy a coffee cup, I wouldn't just buy any coffee cup. I would find, and not about money. It wasn't about like a fancy, it wasn't about a Hermes coffee cup.

50:00Debbie Millman: Just buy like a great design. Whatever it is, get great, not mediocre. And so that kind of became my mantra. And then as I grew up and as life passed, I started living that. So everything I did had a really high bar, whether it was people, whether it was what I collected. And then I do have, I think, one of my gifts that I was born with. It's a DNA thing, maybe from my mother. I have a really good eye and I have a really good sense of yes, no, yes, no. And I practiced that and I didn't even know that what an editor was, but I was a really good editor. and, like, bring me a thousand pic photographs, and I'll pick the, like, best photo in five minutes.

50:47Debbie Millman: And bring me to the biggest thrift store on earth, I'll find the Hermes scarf in, like, you know, 15 minutes. I'm really good at that practice of, like, editing. Like, I can put me in a room with, you know, 100 people, I'll find the best person and talk to them the whole night. And I always joke that I could be in a room of billionaires and there's one artist and I'll talk to the artist all night. I'm really bad at money. That's like not my gift, money. So I can see someone that's rough. And I know when I saw Keith, and I just knew him when he was at Club 57. I met him at Club 57, and he was drawing on the sidewalks.

51:25Debbie Millman: And he had this very first show that he put up with thumbtacks on the wall. And I was kind of like, holy shit, I have to have these. And then I saw Jean-Michel, who was also doing on the walls. They all started on the walls. and I was like dying over his work. Certain things really speak to me and then I go crazy like talking about them. I won't stop talking about them and I have a big mouth and I'm really kind of very, I don't waver. That's why I always hated fashion even though I had to cover fashion because fashion's like today it's in and tomorrow it's out. Like no, that's not correct. Like if you're great, how can you not be great tomorrow?

52:05Kim Hastreiter: You declined to purchase a Busquiat door because you didn't love it. Well, I didn't see it. That's what it was. I didn't see it, yeah.

52:13Debbie Millman: I really, really wanted to get something from John, and he wasn't cheap. It was like$1 ,000 or something, which to me was like a lot. Keith's drawings were$150, so.

52:23Kim Hastreiter: Yeah, but this is also 40 years ago. That was a lot more money then.

52:26Debbie Millman: Yeah, but my friend was his pot dealer, yeah, and called me in the middle of the night once and said, John has a door, because I told him because I knew he knew Jean. I didn't really know him that well, Jean. He said, you know, Jean has a door. Do you want it? It's$1 ,000. I was like, oh, yeah, what is it? Can I come see it? He said, well, you have to come now. It was, again, 3 in the morning, in the middle of the night. He woke me up. He's like, you have to bring$1 ,000 in cash. Where am I going to get$1 ,000? 3 in the morning. He said, and you can't see it. You just have to, like, take it. And I was kind of like,$1 ,000 was like a million dollars to me.

53:07Debbie Millman: I mean, that was like so unspeakable. But if I loved it, I would have like asked my mother for$1 ,000. I mean, she was like on board. My mother drank the Kool-Aid with Keith because I made her like loaned me$300. And then she saw he got so famous really fast. So then my mother, I had my mother. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. And I ended up like telling my mother because when John got kicked out because of the drugs, he got kicked out of his gallery. They had this big sale with my mother. But this night, I was kind of like, I just can't. I can't, like, give you$1 ,000. Also, the other part of my editorial thinking and not having anything mediocre is when I bought something.

53:46Debbie Millman: When I bought Keith's things, I spent seven hours going through, like, thousands of drawings. Like, I only wanted the best pieces of the artists. So my art collection is amazing because I only get the best pieces from the artists. I don't buy just any piece. I hate when people buy it just because it's the name of an artist.

54:05Kim Hastreiter: We can't talk about paper without talking about the break the internet concept.

54:11Debbie Millman: Yeah, I know. That's a whole story. It's a good story.

54:14Kim Hastreiter: It's a good story. You learned how to command the internet and understood virality long before most, if not all, magazines. How did you come up with the break the internet concept?

54:25Debbie Millman: It's a good story because people don't know the story. So we were turning 30. Paper was turning 30. It was our 30th anniversary. And I was kind of over it. I was kind of like not having as much fun anymore. And because it was all about celebrities, I don't like, I'm not a celebrity person. I really don't like celebrities. We like to put people you never heard of on the cover. And then 20 years, they're celebrities. And then they love us and they do our cover again. But so it was our 30th anniversary. And I had these two, like, great young people that I adored who worked for me. One is named Drew Elliott and one is named Mickey Boardman.

55:01Debbie Millman: And so I was starting to delegate to them because I could see I was trying to, like, how can I get rid of it? How can I get out of this paper? I need to, like, move on, you know. And Drew was so genius and creative and amazing. But he also loved commerciality. He was more commercial than me. I'm, like, not commercial. And it wasn't a time wasn't right for being not commercial. It was like the Internet. You had to like and it was all countable. And, you know, I would have gone bankrupt if they kept me. So Drew and Mickey come up to me and said, we want to put Kim Kardashian on the cover of our 30th anniversary.

55:36Debbie Millman: And I was like, over my dead body, are you going to put her on the cover? And then they looked at each other with ashen faces and said, well, we already asked her. And she said yes. And I was kind of like, I don't care. If we're doing our 30th anniversary, Kim Kardashian does not represent paper. You know, this is 10 years ago. So it was like, you know, when she was like, ew, you know, I didn't want Kim Kardashian on the cover of our 30th anniversary issue. I'm like, I can't believe you told her. And everything is like, you know, she was with Kanye and he had a. So I was like, I'm sorry, we're not doing it.

56:12Debbie Millman: I said, do it for the 31st issue. You know, the one after that. She's like, well, we already... So then Drew and Mickey go out, and Drew smokes a pack of cigarettes. I could tell they were really upset, but I was like, no, no. But Drew went out for a half hour, him and Mickey, and then Drew came back to my office and said, okay, Kim, we have an idea. This is how great Drew is. He said, how about we do Kim for the issue after the 30th anniversary? I was like, okay. And let's call it Break the Internet. This was Drew's idea, Break the Internet. He invented that saying. And he said, the entire issue will all be all these people who are viral right now, like the fat Jew.

56:56Debbie Millman: And I didn't even know half these people, you know. And the fat Jew, you know who the fat Jew is? Yeah, of course. Well, the fat Jew, I said, let's make him like, we'll nominate him for president of the internet. It was like the beginning of the internet. We were kind of making fun of the internet. But then Drew like knew all these people that were doing everybody. They all had millions of followers. And then we'll do Kim Kardashian. So Jean-Paul Goude is one of my heroes. He's also known for asses, right? I mean, you've seen his book, Jean-Paul Goude. Yes. So I was like, okay, we're going to use Jean-Paul Goude.

57:27Debbie Millman: We have to use Jean-Paul Goude, Mickey, for this. This is the only person that can do this. So they called Jean-Paul Gould. We called Jean-Paul Gould. And Jean-Paul never heard of Kim Kardashian. I loved him even more. He didn't know the internet. He didn't even know who she was. So Mickey and Drew were going to Paris Fashion Week. And they were going to be there. So they said. And then they said, we have to get Kim's permission. Because, you know, it was all like permission. Because she was so famous. But Kanye was the one giving the permission. And then Kanye remembered. And he knew that Jean-Paul had done this Chanel thing.

57:59Debbie Millman: And so he approved it. And we were like, oh, thank God. And what happened in this shoot, Mickey and Drew were going to Paris for the shows and Jean-Paul and they had this date and Kim was going to be in Paris. So they were all going to be in Paris and they were going to do it at Jean-Paul's studio. and at that moment Kim had fired her PR person which was like a fucking gift from heaven because PR people are cock blockers you know that right so they called me from the studio they said Kim just can't because she said can I bring my hair person I think or makeup person and we were like oh fine you know meanwhile Jean-Paul does everything in advance so he makes drawings so we knew that we were going to have the bottle shot and the ass shot.

58:46Debbie Millman: So it was already decided that he was going to do

58:48Kim Hastreiter: the Carolina Beaumont champagne incident redo. Yeah, redo.

58:53Debbie Millman: Because he had done it. But meanwhile, also, he had this idea to do a two-page spread of Kim Kardashian's ass. Right? Two pages. And she's looking through her legs. So you see her face upside down. But, I mean... Everything. Yeah, everything. Pussy. Everything. And the best is we had to show Kim the plans, and she didn't have a PR person. We just were dealing directly with her, and Mickey kind of knew her. She's really nice. She's actually a really nice, if you get around all the shit, she was so nice. She's like, okay, cool. She said, okay, looks great. And, like, so she arrives with one person, her hair person or makeup, whatever, and Mickey and Drew and Jean-Paul and his assistant, that's all.

59:38Debbie Millman: It was no entourage. It was no cock blockers, no PR people. It was like a blessing that there was no – because the PR people never would have let us do it. And they shot it, and Mickey called me in the middle. He said, she is naked. She's completely naked. And she just went there, and she was like so nice, and she like went there. And he got that close-up shot, right? Well, at the end, he said, we have it. We don't need that other shot. She said, what about that other shot? She wanted to do that other shot. So somewhere in the universe, that shot. And Jean-Paul, afterwards, he called me and said, Kim, you're not going to want that other shot.

1:00:18Debbie Millman: It's like too much. He said, it's like, you want to go to the gynecologist? But somewhere in the universe, that picture exists. Isn't that crazy? Yes. And then when we saw the pictures, I was like, oh, we have to do something because this is going to break our website.

1:00:36Kim Hastreiter: And it hit 15 million hits, like within a day.

1:00:41Debbie Millman: I know. Well, we had 13 million in the first hour. And so our website was all like cobbled together. We didn't have money. It was all, so it was like a NASA space launch. I swear, that night, I remember, we had all these people in the office and I got all these tech people. Everyone was like, they had boosted everything so it could, and it was kind of like, okay, we're going live. And you could just see it was like going up until it hit 13 million, I think, at one in the morning. And then the next morning, it was like all over the world. It was insane. It was insane. No one ever heard of paper.

1:01:14Debbie Millman: And in 24 hours, paper was like everyone knew paper in the whole world.

1:01:21Kim Hastreiter: After decades of being told that paper was uncommercial, couldn't sell ads, how did that moment land emotionally?

1:01:30Debbie Millman: I'm always like, I told you. Come on. Like, you know, I knew it. Like, I know things, and I keep going. I keep pushing. I knew paper would be amazing, and I knew what it was going to be, and we knew it. So it's kind of like, see? And that's where, like, my book, like, every single person, like, rejected my book. You know what they said to me? What have we done before that's the same as this? That's what they asked me. Yeah, they look for the comps. Isn't that insane? It's insane. When they say that to me, I'm like, I can't even, like, answer your question. Yeah. They have no imagination. No. And they want it to be the same as something else, and they only want it to be one thing because it has to sit on the fashion shelf or it has to sit on the art shelf or the design.

1:02:13Debbie Millman: One big publishing company said, we did a book of this guy who collects Italian glass, and it didn't sell. So, sorry, we can't do your book.

1:02:21Kim Hastreiter: Meanwhile, your book is sold out. So, yeah.

1:02:24Debbie Millman: But that's kind of like, you know, you just have to do it yourself, DIY.

1:02:30Kim Hastreiter: Well, let's talk about your book. Last year, you published your memoir, Stuff, A New York Life of Cultural Chaos. And I'm going to try to describe it for our listeners as it is really, despite whatever obstacles you had in getting somebody to publish it, it is one of the most original and unique memoirs I've ever experienced. I have a book here. I have a book in my house in Los Angeles. I need to have it around me. It's not a conventional memoir. I see it more as a life told through objects as witnesses. And the book is structured around the art, clothing, ephemera, furniture, collaborations, and cultural artifacts you've collected over six decades.

1:03:12Kim Hastreiter: Before paper, during paper, after paper. And it functions both as autobiography and as archive. And each item contributes to a radical cross-pollination of art and fashion and music and activism. and reveals how you participated at the center of those collisions as connector and as catalyst. And at the same time, the book is deeply personal. It's about family, loyalty, taste, grief, risk, the discipline of choosing what and who belongs in your life. And the book reads like a manual for cultural stewardship and really argues that what we keep is not accumulation but memory made tangible. Congratulations on this completely original piece of art.

1:04:03That makes my heart sing to hear you say that because, you know, I worked a lot hard on that.

1:04:09Debbie Millman: It's magnificent. But the second one is half of it. There's going to be another half. Good. Can't wait.

1:04:16Kim Hastreiter: I want to talk about the cover. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Jim Joe. The cover. It's stunning.

1:04:21Debbie Millman: It's my favorite artist.

1:04:22Kim Hastreiter: Designed by Jim Joe. What was the process of choosing the cover design? Did you just see it and go, that's it?

1:04:27Debbie Millman: Jim Joe is an artist I adore. I love him. He's a young artist. He's Canadian. I love his work. And I met him. And, you know, he's one of these secret artists, but he doesn't let his name be known. And we became really good friends. And I love his work so much. And, you know, young people really now, I think they're feeling what they're missing, looking on the phone all the time. And I think they're very intrigued by analog, you know, at least the young creatives. They love coming to my house. They love coming to dinner. I love looking around. And Jim Jo, all the young kids really helped me with my book.

1:05:03Debbie Millman: And I love young people, so I'm addicted to young people. And I just became really good friends with Alex, and I said, I want Alex. Would you ever consider doing, you know, doing my book jacket? So he did that one on the inside, the word stuff, and then he did the outside, yeah.

1:05:19Kim Hastreiter: That stuff is 448 pages. It includes over 1 ,439 images of your art collection, collections of clothes, bags, rugs, dishes, wood objects, clay objects, objects made by Ted Muelling, Dansk. And in your essay, Why This and Not That, you state that your strict rule of thumb has always been that you would never live with anything that you don't think is excellent. How do you define excellent?

1:05:46Debbie Millman: I guess it's subjective, right? So it's like, I mean, it's my opinion. Like, I hate certain things that other people love. So it's just personal. People are always like, Kim, tell us how you really feel. I mean, I do not hide what I don't like. I'm very kind of out there.

1:06:07Kim Hastreiter: In the book, you include a piece of art made by Jim Rodd for a show at R &C Gallery. And the work contains a manifesto titled The Ten Principles of Bad Design. And I'm wondering if you could both share the 10 principles and also how they ended up in the book in the first place. So should I read from my book?

1:06:29Debbie Millman: Sure, I would love that. Before I read my 10 principles of bad design, I'm going to give you a context. So my taste in everything I surround myself with has always ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. It reflects my rollercoaster life and passions from high to low, shallow to deep, classic to avant-garde, modern to vintage. I live by the yin-yang for sure. I mean, how boring would it be if everything was the same, if I only lived with everything tasteful, or if I only lived in a house that was kitsch and jellybean colors? To me, it's all in the mix. I live by this philosophy, too. From the people I befriend, old, young, hilarious, serious, quiet, loud, to the furniture I live with, whether my insanely psychedelic printed sofa by Jack Lerner Larson, to my simple favorite Hans Wegner, perfect dining room chairs, from my loud grass green reform storage cabinets to my perfect, nearly invisible Vito bookshelves, balance has always been my intuitive mantra, and I've lived it as well as lived in it my whole life.

1:07:38Debbie Millman: One thing I cannot abide with or live with is bad or mediocre design. What is bad design, you may ask? To me, bad design is when the design has no meaning or function. My pet peeve is an uncomfortable chair, and pure decoration just doesn't float my boat. For example, I've always detested that ugly postmodernist genre of design and furniture that was the rage in the 70s and early 80s. Why? Because it's bad, in my opinion. I've always hated the Memphis movement and all that Italian hideousness passing as good design. Sorry, Edero. Sorry, Gaetano. As with many what comes around goes around trends, I began noticing about a decade back that this one was coming back with a vengeance.

1:08:22Debbie Millman: Oy. When I started hearing all the cool young design kids I knew buzzing about it, worshiping it all. They all laughed as I, of course, rolled my eyes, bitterly complained, and was a big curmudgeon about this resurgence of what I felt was horrible and ugly. But hey, everything's cyclical, and I love kids, so I tried to be open-minded, yet no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't force myself to like it. I used to rant to my late great friend, designer friend, Jim Rollrod, who I adored, even though he loved and collected this shit. He texted me one night to excitedly tell me that he was putting together a fabulous show of all this terrible vintage Memphis stuff he'd gathered at a gallery in Tribeca.

1:09:05Debbie Millman: He'd call the show difficult, and since he knew how much I hated it all, he thought it would be funny to invite me to write some sort of essay for the wall as you enter the show. I wrote this diatribe about bad design and installed it at the entrance of his show with a hat tip, of course, to my great design hero, Dieter Rams. So this is what was on the wall. It was blown up really big. The Ten Principles of Bad Design. One, bad design is tasteless and ugly. Two, bad design is confusing. Three, bad design is obtrusive. Four, bad design is not very functional. Five, bad design is trendy. Six, bad design is overly complicated.

1:09:52Debbie Millman: Seven, bad design is uncomfortable. Eight, bad design is imposing. Nine, bad design is never timeless. Ten, bad design is difficult. Thank you.

1:10:07Kim Hastreiter: Kim, do you think that objects hold memory differently than stories?

1:10:13Debbie Millman: That's a good question. I don't know how to answer that. I mean, I think that they're connected. They're attached. So I think the object without the story and the story without the object are weaker. What makes something worth preserving? A bunch of things. So, like, I'm old, so I don't really buy stuff. That's my rule. You know, I'm old. I have so much stuff. Like, don't buy anything, Kim. Try not to buy anything. But the other day I bought something. I bought this insane QR code. This company makes these QR codes, and it's like they come small, they come medium, they come large, and they're on scarves.

1:10:53Debbie Millman: And when you hold your phone up, it says, fuck Trump. And I bought, like, one for everyone I know, and I bought the big one for me. And they even have a bigger one that I could hang on my terrace. But it's a QR code. It's just a square. And I was like, this is collector's item, right? This is a collector's item. This is like the biggest collector's item. So I went and I had it all flattened and I had it framed like a piece of art. So like I needed it. Why did I buy that? Why did I buy that? Because to me, it represented like this moment that was like amazing, like incredible, like, right?

1:11:32Kim Hastreiter: Yeah.

1:11:32Debbie Millman: And it was a collector's item. Like I know it could be in a museum in like 50 years. But anyway, so there's things like that that are historically important. And as an editor of paper, I would get like every day millions of packages and PR stuff. And, you know, a lot of most of it I would give away or throw away. But there were some things like when Prince changed his name to a symbol, they sent me this like floppy disk and this crazy press release that said from now on, you're not allowed to call him Prince and you have to call him. And it was like a symbol. and we've enclosed a disc so you're never allowed, you have to just put this symbol.

1:12:11Debbie Millman: It was the goofiest thing I'd ever heard. I saved that. I mean, that's to me. That's worth preserving for sure. So there's those things. And then there's just things that the excellence is just unbelievable. Like why do I collect children's Hermes china? I mean, because it's like a circus. Why do I have Nakashim? I mean, a lot of things because they're my friends. So a lot of things are done by my friends. And that always has a lot of meaning to me. A lot of it has meaning to me. So it's really like meaningful things.

1:12:46Kim Hastreiter: In addition to deciding what to collect, it seems right now at this time in your life that you also have to decide what you're going to work on. I know that during COVID, you created a new publication project titled The New Now. You have an ongoing series of zines that you're creating and publishing to document and commemorate the fleeting moments of culture that occur regularly on Instagram until they inevitably disappear. And you're calling them meme zines, which I love. How do you decide now what you want to work on?

1:13:20Debbie Millman: To me, right now, what we're going through that I feel like I have to put art out in the universe. I have to, like, artists have to, like, put the best art, the best inspiration out in the universe right now. That's what we do. That's what I know how to do. And it's so dark right now. And creation is the opposite of destruction. So I have so many projects. I'm making nine new meme zines. I'm almost done with them. They're amazing. How can people find them? I don't know. I just make them and I give them away when I meet people. or I feel such an idiot I didn't bring them to you. I'll get them to you tomorrow.

1:13:58Debbie Millman: But I look at memes like they're, I remember the Bernie Sanders when he had the mittens and everything, right? And then I remember my interns, like they were too young, they don't remember that. So these moments happen. No one remembers the Kim Kardashian cover because that was so long ago, the young people don't know, you know, they don't even know. So it's history that can bend if you don't document the importance of it and the truth of it. And especially now with this fucking AI, there's no truth anywhere. I really am calling on young people to realize that if you don't document what you're living through, someone else is going to make it up and do it wrong.

1:14:41Debbie Millman: Well, history belongs to the victors, right?

1:14:43Kim Hastreiter: Or is written by the victors. Yeah, yeah. You're working on, I think you said, three or four new books, one of which is work. You're working on the Toledo documentary. How is your relationship to ambition involved?

1:14:56Debbie Millman: No, I think it's not ambition at this point, but it really has to do with when you turn 70, you see the end. I realize I have so much in my head. That's why I'm dying to teach. I am dying to teach. I just am dying to empty my head before I die. I want everything that I know and learned and I want to give it away so that I don't want to die. I want to die with an empty head, you know? And when you turn 70, it's kind of like, okay, this is like the last decade, you know, whatever I could get, anything could happen and this is it. So I feel that very urgency. I'm very like maniacal. I'm doing a lot of things, more than even those things that you listed I'm doing.

1:15:42Kim Hastreiter: I have one more question for you and a request. Yes. Here's my last question. It's a long one. In his foreword to your book, Jeffrey Deitch stated that you are more of an artist than a collector. He also writes that your collecting project can be understood as, quote, a conceptual artwork, an extension of the art of assemblage into the cultural space, an ongoing storytelling project documenting the exhilarating radical history of downtown New York from the 1970s to the present, and a cultural crucible that you both witnessed and helped to create. How would you like your life's work to be understood?

1:16:27Debbie Millman: Just to encourage continuity and like have people pick up where I left off. I just think that generosity and like community and like all I want is really to teach the kids to also a little be self-aware and you know what they're living through is nothing like what I lived through I can't even imagine being 18 and having done COVID and then Trump and I mean you know it's like nuts like what are they thinking like what's going to happen it makes me happy that at At least young people are starting to get involved, thank God. But I just feel like I did as much as I could. And I put out as much good shit into the air, into the ether.

1:17:15Debbie Millman: I just want to put goodness and inspiration. I hope I inspire people. And I hope people do the same.

1:17:24Kim Hastreiter: Speaking of kids, before I let you go, here's my request. At the end of Stuff, you write a beautiful letter to the artists of tomorrow. And I'm wondering if we can close the show with you sharing that letter with our audience.

1:17:41Debbie Millman: So I ended with this page, a letter to the kids. Dear kids, as an older person who adores and surrounds myself with young people, I want to write this letter to all the talented, curious, ambitious young kids I know, and even those I don't know who are deep in the world of culture creation these days. I just felt I should give you a heads up from where I sit so you can be more aware of the great value and fragility of the cultural history you're all creating at this energetic, epic time of your lives. Hey, I know you're all just slammed living it, but humor me for a minute because damn, I wish someone had sat me down and schooled me about this when I was 25.

1:18:22Debbie Millman: You see, the older I get, the more I've learned that history is like a game of telephone. As time has moved forward, I'm always shocked to see the amazing cultural stuff that I lived through and participated in being reinterpreted and sometimes even rewritten by each new young generation that comes of age. It's like a slow motion car crash. At first, the interpretations can be close to the truth. But as more time passes and new generations come of age and firsthand storytelling becomes rarer, a subtle warp begins to set in that grows with each new interpretation. Not a bad warp, just a small lost-in-translation one.

1:19:03Debbie Millman: I guess this is what happens, through no ill intention, when past culture is celebrated by people who haven't lived it and who instead learned of it by reading, looking at pictures, Googling, or just hearing about it. As each generation gets further away in time, history definitely begins to bend. And as enough time passes, I'm beginning to see a lot of stuff that to me was historically important in my past, not only getting muddled, but even actually getting erased. Hey, I accept this and usually just have a laugh when I see or hear something very wrong, but it makes me realize that I did the same thing when I was young.

1:19:40Debbie Millman: I now see that everything historically and culturally that I thought was real and true when I was 25 years old probably was actually not. I keep asking myself, is it critical to know where shit truly comes from? Is it important to know what New York used to be like and how it got to be what it is now? Is it valuable to watch an amazing film like the documentary by Jenny Livingston called Paris is Burning to understand about the extraordinary and magnificent genius LGBTQ house bull scene that germinated in Harlem in the early 80s during the AIDS epidemic. I'm so grateful that this film exists and is documented perfectly in stone so it doesn't warp.

1:20:24Debbie Millman: I guess what I'm saying is yes, it's always better to know the difference between truth and an interpretation. As a devoted lifetime cultural anthropologist, I see that knowing true cultural history raises the bar on creativity going forward, because it's all really a continuum. So kids, for God's sakes, you're now living in, creating in, participating in, and leading the charge in one of the most radical, shocking, amazing, shifting times in our history now. The majority of you are natives in a now digital world and are witnessing its repercussions from political to business to art. Please don't leave it up to a generation 50 years from now, or God forbid, AI, to reinterpret what you're witnessing.

1:21:10Debbie Millman: Document it. Write about it. Film it. Make art about it. Collect important stuff that tells stories. Because when you're sitting many decades from now watching the 25-year-olds make art, music, film, and books about it, you can bet you'll be shaking your head wishing you had. Love, Kim.

1:21:27Kim Hastreiter: Thank you, Kim Hath-Rider, for making so much extraordinary work, so much extraordinary stuff that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

1:21:39Debbie Millman: Thank you, Debbie.

1:21:40Kim Hastreiter: Kim's stunning book is titled Stuff, A New York Life of Cultural Chaos. And you can read more about her on her substat, This Is More Stuff, and her website, Amazing Unlimited. This is the 21st year we've been podcasting Design Matters, and I'd like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I'm Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon. Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world.

1:22:23Kim Hastreiter: The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

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