MURRAY MOSS
2002 HONOREE
Design Patron
Murray Moss has had many vocations but it is his current one—call him an Industrial Design Merchant—that has brought him to the cutting edge. Although his role in what he terms the "industrial design chain," might defy definition, one recent publication described him as a "brilliant creator-curator-proprietor." After careers in acting and fashion design, he has, for the last eight years, been bringing important, inventive, and unexpected design to the attention of the public at his Soho store, "moss". For Moss, the world of design is a world of ideas. "A product can represent information," he has said, "but if it is also something you can sit on, all the better."
Moss was born in Chicago and educated at New York University's School of the Arts. In 1978, he co-founded the fashion company Moss Shamask, Ltd. with Dutch designer Ronaldus Shamask. Together they opened the design studio retail clothing shop called MOSS, which expanded into an international distributor of men's and women's fashion. Moss sold the company's trademark and names in 1991.
After that, he began pursuing his private passion, industrial and product design, and then took it public in his store in Soho, which he opened in 1994. His belief is that the best kind of store is one that bespeaks a personal vision, one that is "completely subjective." The store began with 2000 square feet and in 1999, grew to its present 7,000-square-foot size and added furniture to its repertoire.
In his work, Moss blurs the boundaries between designer and retailer to put the consumer on center stage. "If a designer is a playwright," he once said, "a retailer is an actor who illuminates the text." He is a trustee of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and of the Wolfsonian Museum-FIU in Miami. In the year 2000, Moss was named one of House Beautiful's first "Giants of Design." He was also a member of the jury for Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Awards in 2001. In addition, he is a board member of DIFFA (Design Industry's Foundation for Fighting AIDS).
Beth Dunlop