Queer Eye Thom Filicia

If all the stereotypes associated with interior designers, the overbearing snob is an enduring one. Thom Filicia, though, is far from being a stereotype. In an industry based on appearances, artifice and, sometimes, illusion, his utter lack of pretense, evidenced by his open, affable nature both on TV and over the phone from New York last week, has helped him build a far-reaching, ever-growing brand that spans the broadest spectrum of clients and commissions.

On the one hand, he has designed spaces for A-list celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, the late Peter Jennings and Tina Fey (“she’s exactly how you imagine her to be,” he says of the comic actor, “down-to-earth, generous and funny”). His high-end corporate clients include the W chain of boutique hotels. And his New York showroom, Sedgwick & Brattle, does a thriving trade in furniture, fabric and hardware produced by him or by designers he admires. Continue reading →

Ineke Hans’ Long Bench

For culture-loving idealists who believe that art and design have the power to transform society, not just decorate living-room walls, Newfoundland’s Fogo Island Inn is a symbol of hope. Retired tech executive Zita Cobb – a dot.com millionaire who was raised on the island but left at 16 when her father’s fishing job vanished – started the hotel as a means of reviving Fogo’s depressed economy. This was accomplished in part by encouraging tourists to visit the rocky outcrop, which is Newfoundland’s largest offshore island, and also by hiring locals to build and maintain the 29-room structure, and encouraging international filmmakers, artists and writers to visit and spark cross-cultural collaborations. Although the inn, designed by Newfoundland-born, Norwegian-based architect Todd Saunders, only opened in June 2013, it has already created an impressive output, including a line of furniture designed by both Canadian and European designers (Quebec’s Elaine Fortin and England’s Donna Wilson) and made by local craftspeople. The Long Bench, by the Netherlands’ Ineke Hans, is particularly spectacular. Its simple spindle back speaks to the traditional aesthetic of the place – spare, unfussy and tough, in the best ways possible. Price upon request. Through klausn.com.

This piece originally appeared in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, October 16, 2014.

Scent pro Tracy Pepe

The lobby of Toronto’s Trump Hotel has all of the elements of a ritzy, five-star lodging. The check-in desk is wrapped in Macassar ebony. The floor is inlaid with onyx and the drapes are velvet.

The most luxurious design detail, however, isn’t visible or even that discernible. Subtle wafts of champagne and caviar drift through the foyer, giving the place an air of exclusivity, and providing an olfactory signal to the c-suite clientele that they’ve arrived – literally and figuratively.

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Photo courtesy of Shai Gil/superkul

One of the telltale features of a freshly finished, just-built home isn’t the gleaming appliances or unscuffed, piano-gloss floors. It’s the heady, intoxicating, dizzyingly clean smell.

It’s an odour that architect Meg Graham is intimately familiar with, as the principal of Toronto’s Superkul, an award-winning studio that has built many top-quality houses. But in a home she recently completed in Mulmur, Ont. – a beautiful, waterside bungalow with sunbathed interiors and a rich, woodsy palette – “there was no new-home smell,” she says. Not because anything was amiss, but because everything had gone according to plan.

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The Tidal Flux Ottoman

Designer Riley McFerrin was raised in a place that celebrates its artificiality: Los Angeles. But because he married a Canadian (and hated L.A.’s smog), he now lives somewhere almost entirely natural: British Columbia’s serene Sunshine Coast. The unspoiled environs inspire his work. At his year-old studio Hinterland, he hand makes light fixtures from foraged beach branches, and crafts side tables that echo the crystalline shapes of the Rockies. His Tidal Flux Ottoman (co-created with his wife, illustrator Sara Gillingham, as well as fibre artist Coral Harding) takes after the humble, netted crab trap. The rope work – a mix of macramé, crochet and sailors’ knots – looks delicate but is highly durable. The cotton, wool and nylon cords are wrapped around a brass-covered, stainless-steel frame and are tied to withstand wind, rain and the roughest of seas. Tidal Flux Ottoman $3,000. hinterlanddesign.com.

This piece originally appeared in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, June 12, 2014.

Peter Pierobon Coast Range side bar

Post high school, Vancouver designer Peter Pierobon knew his future was in furniture (having had an epiphany while flipping through a tome of chairs and tables), but didn’t know where to learn the trade. Instead of simply signing up at a local community college, he bought a VW Westphalian (it was the early seventies) and travelled North America for 10 months looking for the perfect mentor. He found it in Wendell Castle, a renowned master craftsman equally well-versed in the artistic and engineering sides of design. Forty odd year’s later, Pierobon’s walnut side bar proves that he both learned his lessons well and continues to push himself. The form was inspired by to the beauty of the Rocky Mountains and is hand-constructed with laser-like precision – necessary when building with such complex geometries and colliding, slanted shapes. 36″ h x 15′ w x 28″ d. $19,500. Through peterpierobon.com.

This piece originally appeared in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, July 18, 2013.