INDULGE:
Lap of Luxe
Sky high design
Words by Andre J Durall
Photograph by Jon Humberly
When you absolutely have to get there with enough style wafting in your tailwind to set hearts aflutter and tongues ablaze, the lush lair inside your vehicle must be just as important as the sexy shell. From luxury jets to high-end cars, make sure the outside of your ride is just the beginning of the, well, ride.
Thirty-nine-year-old aircraft interior designer Edese Doret must be thrilled to know that even though it still seems opulent, private jet travel is rapidly becoming more accessible.
An unlikely combination of September 11-based paranoia and an increase in the number of wealthy (but not super-rich) people in America has resulted in a proliferation of aviation companies offering fractional ownership. In other words, that Gulfstream jet you’ve always wanted is now available to you at timeshare prices.
Accessible, however, is not a word to be confused with affordable. Twenty-five hours of private NetJet access through a Marquis Jet membership will cost you north of six figures. Even so, that’s barely a nick on your Louis Vuitton wallet compared to the $45 million it’ll cost you to buy a Gulfstream yourself—not including flight staff, maintenance, gas and miscellaneous expenses (alternate side parking tickets must be rough). All of this is fantastic news for Haitian-born, Bronx-raised Doret, whose company (Edese Doret Industrial Design, Inc.) specializes in creating luxurious and innovative private airplane interiors. In business for himself since 1998, Doret first started designing plane interiors after earning a degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. After six years of rising through the ranks to become one of the main designers at an aircraft design firm, Doret had an epiphany when he was able to handle a new client while his boss was on vacation. “I said, ‘I can do this myself,’ ” Doret explains.
Starting off with helicopter interiors, Doret soon made history by becoming the first person to design a private interior for an Airbus A380—the largest passenger airliner jet in existence (think of a plane that has two levels and enough room for nearly six hundred passengers). “All of my private customers are billionaires,” Doret says of how the project came to be. Natch, since the cost to implement one of Doret’s interior designs can cost as much as $30 million. With clients ranging from Angolan oil firms to the Kuwaiti airforce, and mega plush conversions on everything from Boeings to Lockheeds, tapping Doret to create airplane interiors fit for a … well, you know, makes perfect sense.
“It’s almost a hip-hop way of designing,” says Doret of his non-traditional approach. Instead of carpet, for example, he prefers to use wood or marble floors and he favors freestanding structures such as entertainment centers to break up the interior space instead of walls. One of the only African-American independent aircraft designers in the world, Doret is obviously setting the bar high enough to scrape the top of the 80-foot-high Airbus A380 that made his firm famous.
See you on the plane? But, um, the second floor leather sofa by the flat screen TV is all me.
