Love Stories: Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler

Photography by Thor Swift

Married: September 18, 2008
Together: 14 years

For many gay couples, marriage means recognition, which isn’t something Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler lack. In 1994, Adler sold his first pottery design to Barneys New York, where creative director Simon Doonan presides as one of fashion’s keenest wits. Fourteen years later, Adler, now an interior design mogul and lead judge on Bravo’s Top Design, and Doonan, who when not writing cheeky books often turns up on America’s Next Top Model, describe themselves as sickeningly happy.

So why marry? “I never really needed a wedding, but I wanted all the financial and inheritance rights -- which we still don’t fully have,” Adler says. “That to me is the most underexamined part of the debate.”

On September 18, Adler and Doonan lined up at San Francisco City Hall with Adler’s mom and sister by their sides. “Tons of gay couples were getting married, mostly women,” Doonan says. “It was such a festive atmosphere, because everybody was dressed up and couples had flowers. In government offices the staff usually seems to be a bit worn down and grumpy. But [at City Hall] they were very fun and patient and enjoying it. It was very, very touching, the whole thing.”

But more important, what did the grooms wear? Doonan: “I wore a brown velvet jacket -- which had a button missing and a big stain on the front, but I happen to love that velvet jacket, and it is velvet, so I figured that’s kind of festive -- a liberty-print small-flowered shirt, a narrow mod tie, a pair of Barneys Co-op jeans, and some Hogan sneakers; they give me a bit of extra height. And Jonny wore his little mod-preppy outfit, which was also from Barneys.”

Later they were married in a simple Jewish ceremony in their hotel suite (a.k.a. plan B). “We were going to do it in Big Sur, but the officiant there was a very New Agey person, and I was worried we would all start giggling,” Doonan says. Instead the wedding party spent their honeymoon weekend in Big Sur, joined by Ruben and Isabel Toledo as well as fellow newlyweds Amy Norquist and New Yorker writer Ariel Levy.

Doonan and Adler are so well-matched, it’s almost a relief to learn that Adler becomes annoyed with his husband on occasion. “I don’t know what the opposite of procrastination is, but Simon is unbearably efficient,” Adler says. “It leads to a smugness that makes me enraged.” As for what Adler does to rub his husband the wrong way, Doonan says, “He goes around telling people I’m unbearably efficient!”