It’s 6 o’clock when we pull up to the classically restored freedman’s cottage and chain our bikes to the no parking sign. We pass through the iron gate and Jay is waiting at the door to greet us with his trademark smile and classic artist’s specs. Despite the blazing July heat, he’s the picture of cool.
“I used to work like a lunatic, late into the night, all the time…but now, for the most part, I’ve learned to keep pretty normal hours,” Fletcher tells us from behind a desk in his home office. He says it’s taken some time to develop a disciplined routine, but from the evidence of his success—an iconic American summer Smirnoff Vodka label and an aesthetic recognizable worldwide—his routine appears to be working.
“People always say, ‘God, if I worked at home I couldn’t stay motivated.’ But I find that it’s the opposite…. This is the office, and unless I do something to break that, it’s just gonna stay the office.”
So to turn the page from day to evening Jay plugs in his GPS watch, laces up his red Nikes, and runs the path around Hampton Park, a converted horse track from the late 1800s. The run provides him with a mental and physical break from work life, so that when he returns, he returns home—and to Fla.Vor.Ice—not to work.
“Change clothes, put on the shoes, plug in the watch, make sure the iPod’s charged up, and then I just kind of go.”
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