Bruce Robert Isabell (June 2, 1952 – July 8, 2009) was an American event planner who was behind lavish and innovative events including weddings and funerals of the richest and most famous. He helped make Christmas at the White House during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and helped create innovative events that made Studio 54 in Manhattan into the place to be in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the President of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. and has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams in 1800. The term "White House" is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers.
The presidency of Bill Clinton began at noon EST on January 20, 1993, when Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat, took office following a decisive victory over Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush and Independent businessman Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1996 election, he defeated Perot and Republican Bob Dole to win re-election. He was succeeded by Republican George W. Bush, who won the 2000 presidential election.
Isabell was born in Duluth, Minnesota, where he worked in a flower shop as a youth. After graduating from high school he moved to Minneapolis. [1]
Duluth is a major port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Saint Louis County. Duluth has a population of 86,293 and is the 4th largest city in Minnesota. It is the 2nd largest city on Lake Superior. The largest is Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. It has the largest metropolitan area on the lake, with a population of 279,771 in 2010, the second-largest in the state.
Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2017, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 45th-largest in the United States, with an estimated population of 422,331. The Twin Cities metropolitan area consists of Minneapolis, its neighbor Saint Paul, and suburbs which altogether contain about 3.6 million people, and is the third-largest economic center in the Midwest.
He moved to New York City in the 1970s and was hired by Ian Schrager at Studio 54, after Schrager had seen the creative designs Isabell had developed while he was working for event planner Renny Reynolds who had done work at the club and was the leading planner in his day. Schrager described how Isabell "never tried to do too much, it was never design on steroids, yet there was always the razzle-dazzle". [1]
The City of New York, often called New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Ian Schrager is an American entrepreneur, hotelier and real estate developer, often associated with co-creating the Boutique Hotel category of accommodation. Originally, he gained fame as co-owner and co-founder of Studio 54.
Studio 54 is a former nightclub and currently a Broadway theatre, located at 254 West 54th Street, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building, originally built as the Gallo Opera House, opened in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming CBS radio and television Studio 52.
He started on his own operating a floral shop within Bergdorf Goodman in Midtown Manhattan. He established "a full-service event-production house" in the city's West Village where he would oversee the creation of events around the world, in which the entire setting including flowers, lighting, sound and table decorations would be part of his craft. Anna Wintour of Vogue magazine described him as "the king of the event world" who was "a magician" [1] and the first person that top hostesses would approach to create spectacular events. Isabell created roughly 30 events for writer and editor Tina Brown. She regarded him as "sort of a genius" who had the ability to "take any space and make magic in it". [1] For over a decade, he designed the annual Met Ball for Vogue. [2]
Bergdorf Goodman Inc. is a luxury department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The company was founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and was later owned and managed by Edwin Goodman, and later his son Andrew Goodman.
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Midtown is home to some of the city's most iconic buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the headquarters of the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and Rockefeller Center, as well as Broadway and Times Square.
The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City.
In the late 1970s, he had four tons of glitter dumped on the floor of Studio 54 for a New Year's Eve event, with club co-owner Ian Schrager describing how guests felt "like you were standing on stardust". [1] Bracketed between the 1986 wedding of Edwin Schlossberg to Caroline Kennedy and the 1996 nuptials of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, he worked on the 1994 funeral of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. [1] For the July 1995 wedding of billionaire Robert Warren Miller's daughter Marie-Chantal to Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece at Saint Sophia in Bayswater, London, Isabell created a virtual Greek temple in a tent, including pillars topped with roses, with a budget variously estimated at $5–8 million. [3] For the wedding of Alexandra von Fürstenberg, Marie-Chantal's sister, to Prince Alexandre Egon von Fürstenberg, son of Diane von Fürstenberg, Isabell transformed a tent in Battery Park into a Chinese teahouse complete with a throne room that included hanging lanterns and bamboo trees. [4] For Christmas 1998 at the Clinton White House, Isabell created a massive fir wreath with 1,500 lights individually colored a shade he called "Presidential blue". [5]
Glitter describes an assortment of small, reflective particles that come in a variety of shapes and colors. Glitter particles reflect light at different angles, causing the surface to sparkle or shimmer. The size of glitter is similar to confetti, sparkles, or sequins, but somewhat smaller.
Edwin Arthur Schlossberg is an American designer, author, and artist. He specializes in designing interactive, participatory experiences, beginning in 1977 with the first hands-on learning environment in the U.S. for the Brooklyn Children's Museum. Schlossberg continues to work in the field and publishes frequently on the subject. He is the husband of Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He has published 11 books, including Einstein and Beckett and Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century. His artwork has been presented in many one-man shows and museum exhibits. In 2011, he was appointed to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts by President Barack Obama.
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is an American author, attorney, and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. She is a prominent member of the Kennedy family and the only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
His last project was an Independence Day event he co-prepared for Lally Weymouth in Southampton, New York. [6] Ian Schrager stated that Isabell had headed home from The Hamptons on the night of July 4 and had not been heard from before his death. [1]
Independence Day is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer subject to the monarch of Britain and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress had voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2, but it was not declared until July 4.
Elizabeth Morris "Lally" Graham Weymouth is an American journalist who serves as senior associate editor of the Washington Post. She previously served as special diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek magazine during her family's ownership of the publication.
The Hamptons, part of the East End of Long Island, comprise a group of villages and hamlets in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, which together form the South Fork of Long Island, in Suffolk County, New York. The Hamptons form a popular seaside resort and one of the historical summer colonies of the northeastern United States.
A resident of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Isabell was found dead on July 8, 2009, aged 57, in his townhouse at 16 Minetta Lane, where he had suffered a fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack). He is survived by his mother, two brothers and a sister. [1]
