YouSaid · the spoken record

Mitchell Gold

lines on the record: 64
first: 2022-03-28
most recent: 2022-03-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, first of all, as a buyer at Bloomingdale's, you went to furniture factories and learned how furniture was made so that you could participate in designing furniture. And we called it product development. So as an example, when I was there, there was a new book that came out by Joan Crone and Susie Slessen called High Tech. And what they were showing is people had taken like a big steel I-beam, took two of them, and put a glass top on it. Or they took a tractor stool, a tractor seat, and made a stool out of it. And it was a very popular book. And I looked at that and thought, wow, this is really cool, a new way of looking at modern. It was a very different modern than I grew up with. But what I gave it was saying, well, I think it's just a little too hard edge. I don't think it's going to be really appealing for consumers. So I went to some manufacturers that I had and worked with their designers and said, let's soften this up. Let's make these edges not quite so.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it meant that I was the assistant to the buyer who was making those decisions. And I was helping him and learning how to be the person making the decision. Comforters were just becoming popular and Christian Dior had designed this comforter dust ruffles pillow shams, sheets, draperies. It was the first time a big-name designer like that had done anything in domestics and the first time anybody had done this very coordinated look that wasn't bedspreads.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look. So he was my last interview, and he and I really hit it off well. And he said, do you want to come to work here? I want to put you in my division. So I started as an assistant buyer in Department 80. Blankets, bed spreads, pillows, and comforters.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, although I was a history major in college, I became friends with the dean of the business school, and I was going to go to law school because, of course, that's where my mother wanted me to do. And he said, oh, lawyers are such assholes. They're so boring. You don't want to be a lawyer. He said, you should be in retail because he used to work at Bloomingdale's. And he said, let me call and introduce you to somebody. Go get a haircut because I had this long ponytail. Put on a suit, get a haircut, and go meet this guy because it's going to change your life. So I went and met Mr. Brennan the next day, had a series of interviews, and I fortunately my last interview was with Lester Grubettz, who was probably, you know, if there's 10 merchants from the 20th century who were really outstanding retail merchants. Lester is one of the tops. He turned the houseware's department into a fashion department, a fashion gift department. He turned domestics into this wildly design or successful”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And come to a reckoning with his mother is part of the play. So I go back to New York and I got tickets for the next night. They come in, they go see the play. The next day, my father calls me. And I have to collect myself to say this because I remember standing at this oak desk that I had in my little apartment, my little studio. And my father called and said, I just want to thank you for the tickets last night. And I just want to tell you that Said, I just want to tell you that all I care about is that you're happy and healthy. It was just not what I expected from him because my father was always such a macho guy on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being straight, my father was an 11. So I collected myself and I started to talk a little bit to him and he said you don't owe me any explanation. So that was really great.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By Harvey Feierstein, and I had just seen it, it had just opened. So my mother said, Oh, yes, I've heard about that play. We're going to get a bus and go. And I just, you know, my eyes popped out of my head. I looked at everybody at the table and I said, well, do you know what the play is about? Oh, yeah, it's about a Jewish boy and his mother and how they get along. I said, okay, I wasn't going to tell them because it's about a Jewish boy who's gay.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That just shot me right down, and I went back in the closet for a couple of years. So then I came home one Mother's Day, I was at the country club with my parents and all other friends, and they started talking about a Broadway play called Torch Song Trilogy.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's something I tell parents be very careful what you say to your kids. When I told my mother, it was on a Sunday morning around 11 o'clock. She called me because I hadn't called that week. And I was still sleepy. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. I said, oh, by the way, I'm going away on vacation to St. Thomas. Oh, that's so great. Who are you going with? And I said, I'm going with my friend Michael. Michael, I don't understand why you do so many things with Michael. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? You're such a nice looking boy. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? And I said, Mom, today's the day, and I just have to be honest. Michael is my idea of a girlfriend. Silence. And her words to me were, don't tell your father. He'll have a stroke. You'll kill him.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember being a little upset and saying, no, no, no, I want you to change me. I don't want to be like this. And he really worked with me to get me to accept it and to love myself. But it took me a few more years after that.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's a couple things. One is unfortunately I'm embarrassed to admit that I was like a little bit of a bully against some of the effeminate kids with the other kids in school. And the other part was that I prayed every night. I mean, I cried myself to sleep too many nights and just prayed that God would change me. I didn't understand why God hated me. I didn't understand what I did. It's a horrible, horrible time for a gay kid. But I was really lucky. I eventually got through things. I was in college. I found the psychiatrist and I walked into the office and he said to me, you know, what can I do for you? And I said, well, I'm gay and I want you to change me. And it was the first time I had ever used the word gay out loud. And he looked at me and said, well, I can't change you, but I can teach you how to love yourself.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it's very disparaging. Just like the term queer was very disparaging at the time. And I remember realizing that I had that same attraction to men and really being fearful that I was going to evolve to become very effeminate and people would laugh at me and talk about me behind my back. And that the only thing open to me would be that I could be a dress designer, a hairdresser. I mean, in my wildest dreams, I never thought the things that exist for me now I never dreamt about.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, my teenage years starting around 11, I was emotionally in a very difficult spot because I was starting to realize that I was gay. In those days, it was considered a mental disorder. It was really frowned upon society. There was a gay couple in town, this one fella, Bobby Varga, was a dress designer and his live-in boyfriend Blaze was a hair designer. And I remember my parents talking about them. And they loved to be with them, the Fagelas, they would call them, but you knew that it was bad. You knew that that's not something you wanted to be.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax for it says occupation, I was going to put down juggler. I was always juggling stuff.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Went to them and said we're just starting. And I said, you know, I'm being open with you. These are big orders. I got to buy a lot of materials. I can't necessarily get the credit for it. Could you pay us in 15 days from the day we ship it?”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT