Philippe Starck now says he never discussed a project with Apple

You may recall that a couple of days ago, we reported on controversy surrounding comments made by world-famous designer Philippe Starck, who claimed in an interview that he was working on a ‘revolutionary’ project with Apple that would “be out in eight months”. After word spread around the globe of this exciting new project, Apple quickly issued a denial, stating that the company wasn’t working together with him on anything.

We reached out for comment to Monsieur Starck, and this afternoon, his representatives got back to us with a couple of nuggets of information, in a brief statement:

Further to various announcements in the press, Philippe Starck confirms that he never discussed a project with the Apple corporation. A project, originally with Steve Jobs, is now ongoing on [sic] with Steve’s wife, Laurene, but this is a project of a private nature, on which Philippe Starck doesn’t wish to disclose more details.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, this seems to be something of a U-turn in Starck’s position; he was previously unambiguous in his comments about working with Apple, even citing the company’s “religious cult of secrecy” as reason enough to divulge no further information about the project during the interview.

But the second part of the statement is perhaps more telling, even though it doesn’t explicitly disclose the nature of the project to which it refers.

We previously reported on speculation that Starck was working with Steve Jobs on designing a yacht, a personal project which Jobs began in 2009, and which was mentioned in the authorised biography released after his death last year. The references to an ongoing “project of a private nature” in the statement above would certainly seem to fit that supposition – although it’s anyone’s guess as to how this personal project ultimately came to be discussed as a collaborative effort with Apple.

But there we have it, folks. If there still remained any belief in your mind that Starck and Apple were indeed working together on something unbelievably awesome, consider that belief well and truly squashed. Well, until a rumour resurrects it at some point in the future anyway.