Hoteliers: (Steve Rubell) + Ian Schrager

radit mahindro
24 min readDec 24, 2020

For over five decades, since the 70s, Ian Schrager has been behind some of the world’s most renowned and well-designed places to sleep, drink, and dance, dating back to the iconic Studio 54, which launched a new era of sophisticated hedonism, mixing celebrity glitz with the outlandish underground. He then pioneered the concept of the boutique hotel, turning travel into an art form, and has gone on to open countless hotels and residences. In the process, he has democratised luxury and made the exclusive inclusive, revolutionising the entertainment, hospitality, food and beverage, retail and residential industries.

Early Life
Graduating college in the 1960s, Steve Rubell served a stint in the National Guard in an intelligence unit before attempting to launch a Wall Street career, which he quickly realised did not appeal to him. Instead he borrowed money from his father and friends to become a restaurateur, opening the Steak Loft in Rockville Centre, Long Island, in the early 1970s. Success came rapidly, so that by 1974 he opened a dozen more Steak Lofts in New York, Connecticut, and Florida. He also owned stakes in a pair of Queens’ discotheques.

It was at this point that he turned to Ian Schrager, who had become a real estate lawyer, to help him run his enterprise and provide the kind of organisational skills he lacked. Together they opened a successful disco, only to have it shut down when disgruntled neighbours sued them.

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