Internationally known textile designer Wesley Mancini looked exhausted last week as he sat in his uptown Charlotte studio.
The problem wasn't so much the lousy business climate, even if his firm, whose clients have ranged from Laura Ashley to Joseph Abboud, has withered from 30 employees to eight in the past few years.
In the '90s, Mancini turned gay activist when a group of Mecklenburg County commissioners famously stripped funding from the Arts & Science Council over the staging of the "Angels in America" play about the AIDS crisis.
Nearly 15 years later, Mancini is rightly livid: How can Charlotte promote itself as a beacon of the New South, yet still be a place where a homophobic commissioner like Bill James - or, say, a Dixie's Tavern bartender - can spew hate and feel right at home?
"The gay community in Charlotte is not even considered a minority," said Mancini, 58. "We're not considered, period. There's this whole thing here about tolerance - you can tolerate a stomach ache. I think this town is full of tolerance, and they would rather not have us here."
Mancini grew up in Connecticut, but came to Charlotte in the late 1970s for close access to the mills. Today, he sits on several nonprofit boards, including his own, the Wesley Mancini Foundation, which promotes inclusion of Charlotte's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Yet here's the rub: Like most Americans, Mancini's working so hard to pay his own bills, he's got little time - or energy - left to fight loud-mouths like James. His eponymous firm creates the textures, colors and patterns of home furnishings, including sofas and drapes. The flight of his customers to cheaper labor and design overseas has forced him to shake up his business model, discontinuing, for example, lower-margin bedding products while expanding into higher-end upholstery, rugs and drapery hardware.
As Mancini says, "I've lived through times where I've been made fun of, called 'faggot' or whatever. But right now, I'm in the process of redefining my company. I just don't have time to be addressing the issues that I should be addressing. And I feel bad about that."
A couple of days ago, for example, he says he signed a rug contract with a U.S.-based company that manufactures in Nepal, Pakistan and India. And last week he accepted an offer for his 11,000-square-foot headquarters. All the while, though, the thought of James' comments irritated him. "We're sexual predators, according to Bill James," he says sarcastically.
Mancini concedes there's been progress overall. In the early '80s, "My male friends said things like, 'I'm straight at work.' And I'd be like, 'Oh, give me a break; if I was 3 I'd know you're gay.' It's what they had to do to survive in the business world."
Unfortunately, any belief those days are far behind must be tempered against the highly public gay-bashing by one of our top elected officials. Charlotte's corporate leaders might say it's bad for the brand. Mancini puts it another way: "You feel like we've come a long a way and then all of a sudden, we are right back where we were."
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