Letter from the Editor

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 9/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

It's Thursday, September 2, at 10:30 PM. Our annual New York issue is finally going to press, and I am definitely elated while I compose this wrap-up.

Sitting at the amber-lacquered desk in my well appointed studio, though, my eyes keep wandering to the muted TV in the corner. On the screen is another individual who's finishing up his business in Manhattan tonight. Unlike me, he's at the center of a nationally televised extravaganza, standing all alone on a strange altarlike structure. He's clearly mouthing a speech, but—with the volume down—this familiar fellow seems surreal, a 1950's groom figurine plonked on top of a squashed wedding cake, brideless.

Certainly not helping the matter are the klieg lights, the garish primary colors, and the inherent flatness of the medium. As we in publishing can attest, life in two dimensions can be tough—it's largely a matter of finding a conducive subject. There are a lot of really bad ones around. Some others are good. Fewer still are great.

In the design business, New York is still the most exceptional one around, the ultimate embodiment of urban hyperspace. That means more than three dimensions, by the way, but somehow we managed to capture them all in a portfolio practically bursting at the seams. Our selection encompasses the best this town has to offer in hospitality, entertainment, retail, beauty, and office design, from Bergdorf's to Battery Park City. We even squeezed in the Empire State Building and the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. (Skipping Madison Square Garden.)

Let me remind you, keep stretching toward territories we will chart only in years to come.