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"New York Times
ON a warm autumn afternoon, Allison Storr was giving Brad Peik, a San Francisco real estate investor, a crash course on the Chelsea art world. “The gallery scene can be a little intimidating,” Ms. Storr said as she took him on a tour of galleries that was intended as a primer for cocktail party chatter, not collecting.
Later that night, Ms. Storr planned to give a dinner party at her downtown penthouse to introduce Mr. Peik, 39, and his girlfriend, Sarah Kehoe, to New Yorkers they might want to socialize with while they figure out whether to make the city a part-time home.
A week earlier, the couple had moved into a TriBeCa rental that Ms. Storr had found and temporarily furnished, filling it with flowers and groceries. She wrote up a city guide, a combination of her favorite spots and trendy places she thought they should know about, like the Waverly Inn.
“Allison is covering all the bases for me,” said Mr. Peik, who spends winters in Lake Tahoe in California and feels more comfortable navigating ski slopes than society. “I didn’t want to waste my short time here setting up an apartment and figuring out what we would do here.”
His girlfriend, a photographer, was grateful that she didn’t have to deal with the move. “If I had no job and nothing going on, it would seem reasonable for me to do these things,” said Ms. Kehoe, who was wearing a boho pink dress from Matta, a downtown boutique, that Ms. Storr’s staff stylist, Chloé Garcia Ponce, had helped choose.
Looking for someone to curate your life? Need a personal concierge whose expertise is not picking up dry-cleaning but helping chose your wardrobe, your tastes, your friends? Ms. Storr calls herself a personal manager, but her duties go far beyond that. Her clients, all of them men, pay monthly fees of $4,000 to $10,000 to have her be their personal decider in nearly all things lifestyle-related.
Calling on assistants including a stylist and a caterer, Ms. Storr helps people figure out their tastes. If they are single, she enhances their social profile (though she insists she is not a matchmaker). She currently works with eight men, she says. (She has had only one female client, who needed help relocating after a divorce.)
Most of Ms. Storr’s clients are single and too preoccupied with work to organize their personal lives, she says. They are either moving to Manhattan or live in the city part-time and covet her contacts, which she uses to link them with interior designers, contractors, art dealers or potential social acquaintances.
“I get people together in a room and let them figure it out for themselves,” said Ms. Storr, 39, a petite blonde with intense blue eyes who seems constantly happy and curious. “I help clients expand their social circle by looking at things they are interested in. If I think two people should meet, I might encourage an introduction, but it’s an organic process.” (Marriage is an outside chance. She claims one since opening Allison Storr & Company in 2005.)
She is helping Dr. W. Scott Harkonen, the president of CoMentis Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, plan a West Coast fund-raiser for Alzheimer’s research. Then there’s the destination 40th-birthday party in Mexico she is organizing for a client whose business is private equity investing. And the chief executive she’s helping to open an art gallery in San Francisco, where she lived for 12 years before moving to New York two years ago.
For each person, she draws up a work plan to outline goals, like getting involved in the music scene or making friends in creative fields, which she reviews with her client monthly. “I help build their plan for their life,” she said.
Every so often, those plans get impulsive, even irrational: she once helped a client move between three apartments in New York in eight weeks.
Ms. Storr has apparently figured out what many an Internet networking site has not: how to turn various social connections into cash. She insists that she does not take commissions from the galleries, restaurants or hairstylists she sends clients to. Jackie Greenberg, an interior designer whom Ms. Storr recently referred a client to, said, “Allison collects people and shares them.”
Ms. Storr’s “light-bulb moment,” when she realized she could turn her skills into a career, came three years ago. A friend asked for help with a theme party for 300 guests. Ms. Storr said she didn’t have time. “He said, ‘What if I pay you?’ ” Ms. Storr said. “That launched it.”
Ms. Storr, educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New England prep school, and at U.C.L.A., where she studied economics, business and art history, completed a one-year certificate program in contemporary art at Christie’s in London. It’s the kind of background many successful men might choose in a wife. But Ms. Storr said she has never dated a client, and she is unattached. “What I do for my clients are things that I have done for myself my whole life,” she said. “I’m not looking to expand my social circle.”
A partner in a New York law firm, who agreed to be interviewed if he was not named to protect his privacy, said he has employed Ms. Storr for two and a half years. Last summer, Ms. Storr organized an ’80s theme party at the lawyer’s house in the Hamptons for about 200 of his friends, with a $5,000 budget. “It was honestly one of the most fun parties out there,” the lawyer said. “By now all my friends know that Allison works for me.”
He calls her an outsourced wife. “The nice thing is that when I ask her to do something, she gets it done and there’s no negative feelings.”
Ms. Storr sees nothing particularly sexist about her career. “For a lot of the guys I work with it’s helpful to have a feminine touch to their lives,” she said. She recently bought her own beach house in Sag Harbor.
For clients who already have a romantic partner, befriending that significant other is a must. They usually embrace her back, quickly figuring out that she’s a good vehicle for promoting their own tastes, particularly in matters of closet space and catering. “They get their say without having to be overt about it,” Ms. Storr said.
“I trust her judgment,” Ms. Kehoe, the photographer and girlfriend of Mr. Peik, said. “Brad will ask me a question like, ‘Where should I get a haircut?’ and I’ll say, ‘Ask Allison!’ ”
Asked if all that delegating stifled her own judgment, Ms. Kehoe said she thought of Ms. Storr’s services as luxuries that don’t detract from her individuality. “If I picked out a good restaurant or a perfect dress, that’s not really a thing I use to value myself, so it doesn’t make me feel strange at all to have Allison do those things,” she said.
Mr. Peik said he would feel more comfortable flying from Ms. Storr’s warm nest after he knew the city better. “Once I’ve lived here for a year,” he said, “I’ll probably go find a different apartment and discover a lot of things on my own, but Allison got us up to speed really quickly.”
At Ms. Storr’s dinner party for the couple, which she paid for herself, about half her 20 guests knew that Mr. Peik and Ms. Kehoe were clients, said Ms. Storr, who had invited mostly what she described as “hip, cool couples” and no other clients.
The other guests included Raj Roy, the new film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and Di Ana Pisarri, an actress and relationship coach who lives in the same building as Mr. Peik and Ms. Kehoe.
As the party wound down, Ms. Kehoe, wearing another dress picked out for her by Ms. Storr’s stylist, happily chatted up fellow photographers invited for her benefit. Mr. Peik looked pleased but slightly out of his element, as if observing a diorama of his New York life and trying to figure out where he fit in. “It’s been a really fun night,” he said. “It didn’t feel forced and didn’t seem like we were the reason for Allison having a party.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/f...2178000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
"New York Times
ON a warm autumn afternoon, Allison Storr was giving Brad Peik, a San Francisco real estate investor, a crash course on the Chelsea art world. “The gallery scene can be a little intimidating,” Ms. Storr said as she took him on a tour of galleries that was intended as a primer for cocktail party chatter, not collecting.
Later that night, Ms. Storr planned to give a dinner party at her downtown penthouse to introduce Mr. Peik, 39, and his girlfriend, Sarah Kehoe, to New Yorkers they might want to socialize with while they figure out whether to make the city a part-time home.
A week earlier, the couple had moved into a TriBeCa rental that Ms. Storr had found and temporarily furnished, filling it with flowers and groceries. She wrote up a city guide, a combination of her favorite spots and trendy places she thought they should know about, like the Waverly Inn.
“Allison is covering all the bases for me,” said Mr. Peik, who spends winters in Lake Tahoe in California and feels more comfortable navigating ski slopes than society. “I didn’t want to waste my short time here setting up an apartment and figuring out what we would do here.”
His girlfriend, a photographer, was grateful that she didn’t have to deal with the move. “If I had no job and nothing going on, it would seem reasonable for me to do these things,” said Ms. Kehoe, who was wearing a boho pink dress from Matta, a downtown boutique, that Ms. Storr’s staff stylist, Chloé Garcia Ponce, had helped choose.
Looking for someone to curate your life? Need a personal concierge whose expertise is not picking up dry-cleaning but helping chose your wardrobe, your tastes, your friends? Ms. Storr calls herself a personal manager, but her duties go far beyond that. Her clients, all of them men, pay monthly fees of $4,000 to $10,000 to have her be their personal decider in nearly all things lifestyle-related.
Calling on assistants including a stylist and a caterer, Ms. Storr helps people figure out their tastes. If they are single, she enhances their social profile (though she insists she is not a matchmaker). She currently works with eight men, she says. (She has had only one female client, who needed help relocating after a divorce.)
Most of Ms. Storr’s clients are single and too preoccupied with work to organize their personal lives, she says. They are either moving to Manhattan or live in the city part-time and covet her contacts, which she uses to link them with interior designers, contractors, art dealers or potential social acquaintances.
“I get people together in a room and let them figure it out for themselves,” said Ms. Storr, 39, a petite blonde with intense blue eyes who seems constantly happy and curious. “I help clients expand their social circle by looking at things they are interested in. If I think two people should meet, I might encourage an introduction, but it’s an organic process.” (Marriage is an outside chance. She claims one since opening Allison Storr & Company in 2005.)
She is helping Dr. W. Scott Harkonen, the president of CoMentis Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, plan a West Coast fund-raiser for Alzheimer’s research. Then there’s the destination 40th-birthday party in Mexico she is organizing for a client whose business is private equity investing. And the chief executive she’s helping to open an art gallery in San Francisco, where she lived for 12 years before moving to New York two years ago.
For each person, she draws up a work plan to outline goals, like getting involved in the music scene or making friends in creative fields, which she reviews with her client monthly. “I help build their plan for their life,” she said.
Every so often, those plans get impulsive, even irrational: she once helped a client move between three apartments in New York in eight weeks.
Ms. Storr has apparently figured out what many an Internet networking site has not: how to turn various social connections into cash. She insists that she does not take commissions from the galleries, restaurants or hairstylists she sends clients to. Jackie Greenberg, an interior designer whom Ms. Storr recently referred a client to, said, “Allison collects people and shares them.”
Ms. Storr’s “light-bulb moment,” when she realized she could turn her skills into a career, came three years ago. A friend asked for help with a theme party for 300 guests. Ms. Storr said she didn’t have time. “He said, ‘What if I pay you?’ ” Ms. Storr said. “That launched it.”
Ms. Storr, educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New England prep school, and at U.C.L.A., where she studied economics, business and art history, completed a one-year certificate program in contemporary art at Christie’s in London. It’s the kind of background many successful men might choose in a wife. But Ms. Storr said she has never dated a client, and she is unattached. “What I do for my clients are things that I have done for myself my whole life,” she said. “I’m not looking to expand my social circle.”
A partner in a New York law firm, who agreed to be interviewed if he was not named to protect his privacy, said he has employed Ms. Storr for two and a half years. Last summer, Ms. Storr organized an ’80s theme party at the lawyer’s house in the Hamptons for about 200 of his friends, with a $5,000 budget. “It was honestly one of the most fun parties out there,” the lawyer said. “By now all my friends know that Allison works for me.”
He calls her an outsourced wife. “The nice thing is that when I ask her to do something, she gets it done and there’s no negative feelings.”
Ms. Storr sees nothing particularly sexist about her career. “For a lot of the guys I work with it’s helpful to have a feminine touch to their lives,” she said. She recently bought her own beach house in Sag Harbor.
For clients who already have a romantic partner, befriending that significant other is a must. They usually embrace her back, quickly figuring out that she’s a good vehicle for promoting their own tastes, particularly in matters of closet space and catering. “They get their say without having to be overt about it,” Ms. Storr said.
“I trust her judgment,” Ms. Kehoe, the photographer and girlfriend of Mr. Peik, said. “Brad will ask me a question like, ‘Where should I get a haircut?’ and I’ll say, ‘Ask Allison!’ ”
Asked if all that delegating stifled her own judgment, Ms. Kehoe said she thought of Ms. Storr’s services as luxuries that don’t detract from her individuality. “If I picked out a good restaurant or a perfect dress, that’s not really a thing I use to value myself, so it doesn’t make me feel strange at all to have Allison do those things,” she said.
Mr. Peik said he would feel more comfortable flying from Ms. Storr’s warm nest after he knew the city better. “Once I’ve lived here for a year,” he said, “I’ll probably go find a different apartment and discover a lot of things on my own, but Allison got us up to speed really quickly.”
At Ms. Storr’s dinner party for the couple, which she paid for herself, about half her 20 guests knew that Mr. Peik and Ms. Kehoe were clients, said Ms. Storr, who had invited mostly what she described as “hip, cool couples” and no other clients.
The other guests included Raj Roy, the new film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and Di Ana Pisarri, an actress and relationship coach who lives in the same building as Mr. Peik and Ms. Kehoe.
As the party wound down, Ms. Kehoe, wearing another dress picked out for her by Ms. Storr’s stylist, happily chatted up fellow photographers invited for her benefit. Mr. Peik looked pleased but slightly out of his element, as if observing a diorama of his New York life and trying to figure out where he fit in. “It’s been a really fun night,” he said. “It didn’t feel forced and didn’t seem like we were the reason for Allison having a party.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/f...2178000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
