Meet designer Ryan Korban, an unrepentant perpetrator of cruelty to animals. (“People don’t come to me for green design. I love fur, animal skins and taxidermy.”) Korban gets himself glamourized in Out (“I get a lot of mean E-mails”) and the Journal:
Korban’s SoHo apartment… can be described as a minimalist animal-rights activist’s nightmare. The couch is covered with sheared mink. The bathroom rug is spring buckskin. His night stand is made of stingray; the face of his dresser set is covered with ostrich skin. “What can I say? I love my exotics[.]”
He isn’t an outlier case. You expect gays to be at the vanguard of social thought, to stand on principle, to defend the weak, but that isn’t how it works. Gays’ selfishness and decadence are actually more offensive than, say, Republicans’: Not only are gays supposed to know better, they actually do, then spin on their ethical heels and swish down the road in the opposite direction.
Out is actually a good venue to examine this trend, having given us a double-page spread of fur coats and gay cruises. “Whether you’re a dandy or a daddy, you’ll want to burrow into these stylish, comfy coats,” like a beaver/corduroy jobby for $8,800 and a mink-trimmed Burberry at $3,795.