YOU’RE INVITED

IN HIS NEW BOOK, MASTER OF CEREMONY KEN FULK TAKES US BEHIND THE CURTAIN INTO A WORLD OF FANTASTICAL DESIGN, HISTORY-MAKING PARTIES AND ABSOLUTELY LIMITLESS BUDGETS

THE HOOK Inside the magical world of Ken Fulk

Design books can be staid affairs: page after page of perfectly styled spaces, often devoid of the humans who actually inhabit them. And when compared to “Mr. Ken Fulk’s Magical World,” out this month from Abrams, they have a disappointing lack of drag queens, exotic animals and muscular, shirtless men serving hors d'oeuvres.

“To me life has always had a cinematic quality, as if a troupe of elaborately costumed dancers might make an entrance at any moment,” writes Fulk, who has made it his business to not just build the set but to direct each detail of the captivating performance for his deep-pocketed clients. The book showcases Fulk’s most jaw-dropping design projects, but it is the stories that accompany them, told by Fulk himself, that reveal the true scope and splendor of the work done by Fulk and his team of “Magic Makers.” He tells of creating a “post-apocalyptic ski lodge” at the World Economic Forum in Davos on a two-week timeline (complete with a wall of taxidermy shooting lasers from their eyes), to personally offering a million-dollar non-refundable deposit in order to close a real estate deal on behalf of clients who had never even seen the house on offer. But it’s the tale of how he came to own The Magic Factory, a four-story SoMa building that serves as his creative headquarters, that gives the best clue as to what that fairy dust of his is actually made of: “The moment I walked in the door, I knew that this was it,” writes Fulk. “I had no idea how, or if, I would even qualify to buy such a building, but that seemed of little consequence. Like many things in my life, I charged ahead knowing that I would somehow figure it out along the way.” For Fulk, impossibility is simply an illusion.