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Paul Craffey has lived a varied and fascinating life, having enjoyed success in a multitude of industries and careers. Though born and educated in Boston, he considers himself a New Yorker and has a passion for the theatre and performing arts, both on and backstage.
Paul graduated from the School of Communications at Boston University with a BA in Public Relations and Communications. His first real job out of college was working at Robert L Green Associates, the fashion designer for Playboy Magazine and numerous other fashion houses, where he worked while pursuing a career in acting. One auspicious day, a model failed to show for a fashion gig and Paul was asked to fill in, to great success. This chance occurrence lead to a decades-long career as a working model.
Years later, Paul was introduced to an executive at fashion house Malcolm Starr over dinner, and this individual offered Paul a job as a traveling fashion salesman and emcee. After only 6 weeks into this new role, serendipity struck again and Paul was brought in from the road and asked to run an entire fashion division! This lead to a second career managing teams at several highly successful fashion houses and eventually heading an entire fashion company.
Years later, Paul left the fashion business to open an antique shop in Massachusetts on a whim, but sadly this endeavor was not meant to be a success. After closing the store, he moved back to Manhattan, where a job in an established antique store taught Paul the ins and outs of the antique business. Leveraging this newfound knowledge, Paul started a Flea Market that continued to be a huge success for many years, and was able to springboard himself into a full-blown career in the antique business. He sold his wares at all of the big NYC antique shows, including the Pier Show. To find exclusive pieces, Paul traveled the country and throughout the world, eventually discovering an emerging market in Hungary after the Soviet occupation. A bulk of his success came from this savvy shopping of the Hungarian antique market.
His success continued until 2012, when Paul chose to liquidate and close down his antique business. Not long before this, Paul had been spending more and more of his spare time performing in musicals and doing theatrical outreach. Once the antique business wrapped, Paul found himself free to return to his earlier passion of performing with gusto.
In recent years, Paul has become increasingly involved in the New York cabaret scene, directing, producing and performing in both solo shows and group presentations. He and his partner, Ron Roberts, have written and produced a number of cabaret and variety shows in NYC. Most recently, Paul and Ron wrote, produced, directed and performed their original cabaret show, The French Connection, to a sold out house at Don't Tell Mama in Manhattan.
For more about Paul’s incredible life, click here.
In addition, Paul has years of professional experience emceeing events of varying size and scope.
He emcees many types of events, including fashion shows, memorial services and social events. Paul has also worked at numerous landmark locations, including the Waldorf Astoria, Plaza Hotel, Javits Center CBS Studios and the 3 West Club.
