Adam D. Tihany, founder, Tihany Design

I’m Stacy Shoemaker Rauen editor in chief of Hospitality Design magazine, with HD‘s What I’ve Learned podcast. My conversation today is with the self proclaimed father of restaurant design, Adam Tihany, who is celebrating 40 years with his namesake New York firm. His mantra, creating restaurants as a portrait of the chef, even though his greatest mistakes were made designing his own restaurant Remi. He’s also lend his signature, elegant touch to hotels and cruise ships alike, focusing on luxury projects that allow him to continue to design along with his 15-person team.

Stacy Shoemaker Raun: Hi. I’m here with Adam Tihany, my dear friend and an amazing designer. Hi, Adam. Thanks for joining us today.

Adam Tihany: Hi, vice president, editor in chief Stacy Shoemaker.

SSR: They give me lots of titles here. We’re so glad you could join us.

AT: Me too. Thank you for having me.

SSR: Thanks for coming. So, we want to start at the beginning. Did you always know you wanted to be an architect? Or growing up, did you have any family influence that led you down this path?

AT: No.

SSR: That’s it? Nothing?

AT: As you may know, I grew up in Israel. And, like every good Israeli, at the age of 18, I started my military service. What happened shortly after is the Six-Day War. So, my military service got extended from two years to three years, and I ended up spending a year and a half of my life in the Suez Canal as a soldier. It gave me a lot of time to think what do I want to do. And the only conclusion that I arrived to was that I wanted to leave the country and get my education elsewhere, if possible. I just needed a break.

So, those days, we’re talking about mid-’60s, there was no internet or Google, or any one of these kind of wonderful devices where you are connected to everything and everybody. The research happened in a very primitive way. And, through my connection, so to speak, I figured that the closest place to Israel to go and study was Italy. And, Italy had extended favorable terms to Israeli students, and universities were state owned. So, it wasn’t expensive to go. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to the United States, or to England, where tuition was extremely high. And, the only two faculties that were accepting students from Israel at the time were Veterinary Medicine in Bologna and Architecture in Milan. So, my knowledge of architecture at the time was that I did not want to be a veterinarian. That’s about it. So, I ended up going to Milan to study architecture. You can say, it was like a default decision, more than anything else. I never dreamt of being an architect. I was sort of artistic child, but not to the level that was a career opportunity. Sometimes there were times that I wanted to run away with the circus, fireman—all the usual stuff. But, I never really thought of architecture as an outlet for my creative energies, until I got to Milan. Does that answer your question?

SSR: It does answer my question very, very well. Did you travel as kid at all or?

AT: No.

SSR: No?

AT: No. I mean, you have to remember that those days travel was expensive. I grew up in an emerging country that had its problems, shares of problems. It was not a wealthy country at the time. Travel was not something you did. I grew up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which 40 miles away, seemed like you needed a year to plan to visit Tel Aviv. So, it was not like you just hop on an airplane and go. My first restaurant, first restaurant that I’ve ever been to, where I sat down and got served food, and ordered from a menu, I think I was 18. And, it was a Chinese restaurant in Jerusalem. And, if that would not give you the trauma of your life, nothing will.

SSR: So, architecture was your default. But, did you find that you liked when you got there, and that you it was obviously something that you’re good at? What was the reaction to it?

AT: The adventure continues, as we say. I got to Milan in November of 1969. It was a year after the Red Summer in France. So, the universities were basically occupied by students with red scarfs, screaming Mao and Stalin slogans all over, and basically just sitting there discussing the population of China, communism, and so on. There was really no structure to the universities, so to speak. I felt very responsible for the fact that my parents scrapped away a little bit of money to send me to Italy. And, I felt obliged to do something. So, I found myself a job, working in an architectural studio in Milan, to basically justify my being.

I figured if I can’t learn anything in the universities, maybe I learn the profession as an apprentice, the old fashion way. Hang out with professionals and see if anything rubs off. And indeed, that’s how I started my career, making blueprints. Those days, blueprints were made with ammonia. So, I was stoned most of the time. But, slowly and surely, I got to learn how to draw, how to use a pencil, how to use a straight edge, and a compass. And, there were some very nice people there that took me under their wings, and, basically a year and a half later, I became the junior partner of the firm. So, I guess I was driven, ambitious, and I had some talent, I guess. Obviously, I would not have gotten there that fast.

SSR: What kind of projects did you work on over there?

AT: Well, it was the end, the late ’60s. Italy was depressed economically. And, the architects of the time, almost all of them, turned their talents to whatever they could find. And, among those things were product design, graphic design, exhibition design, interiors. So, we were not really doing architecture per se. But, we were doing everything that has to do with creativity. And, it was also the birth of Italian design at the time, contemporary Italian design, luckily. Actually, my first job that had, I worked at the office of Joe Colombo, who sadly passed away three months after I got there. But, it was the first designer that used plastic material to create furniture. So, it was really the birth of contemporary design, right there and then. And, I had the good fortune of being there at the right time. The firm that I was working with had a very close connections to the Milan Furniture Fair, which was just emerging at the time. So, we did a lot of exhibit designs and graphic designs. It was the kind of creative atmosphere where ‘Show me the problem, and I give you a solution.’ That was the definition of design at the time. And so, I learned how to do all kinds of stuff. And, actually my first project was an ashtray.

SSR: Interesting.

AT: Yes. That was the first thing I did. I did a ceramic ashtray. I’ll never forget. And, my mother, my late mother, used to have it for many years. She passed away five years ago, and I did a thorough search of her belongings, and the ashtray was never found. I guess she broke it sometime ago.

SSR: It would’ve been great to see. So, what brought you to New York in the late ’70s?

AT: Well, as a good Israeli, United States was always the Holy Grail. For me, it was Alfred E. Neuman and Hugh Hefner combined. I always wanted to be part of this great America. In 1975, there was a very important exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York called Italy: the New Domestic Landscape. It was curated by Emilio Ambasz. And, it was the introduction to the United States of contemporary Italian design, which was emerging and making a lot of headway, and pushing aside all the Scandinavians who were, for quite some time, dominant in the design world.

After that exhibit, some American firms came to Italy looking for an Italian designer to come and be imported to the United States, and start working with them, creating or bringing this magic dust with them. And, they came to our studio in Milan, and the moment I heard that they were looking for somebody to go to the United States, I immediately jumped on the opportunity. And, sure enough, I was imported to New York. And, that was in late ’75. So, here I am.

SSR: Did you work with anyone at first?

AT: Well, I worked with them. It was a company called ERD, Environmental Research and Development. They had a very big practice that did contract interiors, offices, and stuff at the time. So, I joined them, and I opened a little subsidiary within their company called Unigram that did product development, basically, at the time, where we did office systems and furniture, and so forth. But, I was Italian. I was hanging out with the Italian crowd. In New York, it was the time where they started coming here and bringing businesses. And because I spoke fluent Italian, and I also understood the American mentality, or at least they thought I did, I was sort of a liaison between a bunch of people there. It was called at the time, by the way, the Eurotrash. I don’t know if you remember. I mean, you were too young to remember this. But, they used to hang out in places like Regin and La Goulue and all of those places. Everything with a La.

And in one of these gatherings, I met an Italian, very flamboyant and fascinating, and prominent Italian decorator, because at the time that was the thing to do, who had a very upscale clientele. He was a Venetian gentleman. He asked me if I was interested in helping him out because he needed a local designer in New York to supervise and help build an apartment that he was in charge of. So, I said, ‘Sure, why not? I mean, I’m with this firm here, with ERD, and I have my own little business with them, but if we can help you, why not?’ So, he takes me to see a building that was under construction. It was the Olympic Tower. The 43 and 44th floors, there was no curtain wall or anything, we just went up in this service elevator. We get up to the top of this building, almost, and he says, ‘Well, this is going to be the apartment.’ I said, ‘What do you mean this is gonna be the apartment?’ So, it turns out it was like 30,000 square feet, two entire floors, designed for, at the time, the world-leading arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi. Same name. And, I said, ‘Well, this is great, except I’m Israeli. I don’t know. This doesn’t sound really kosher to me.’ He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. He’s a very nice man. And all of people around him are Jewish anyway.’ That was his answer. But, to make a long story short, we started that project. It turns out to be one of the biggest apartments that was done in New York at the time. I remember we had 110 rooms and 130 doors.

SSR: That’s a hotel.

AT: Right. And, at the time, the doors, I think, were, like, $3,000 each. I mean, I’m talking about 1978. Three-thousand dollars times whatever. At the time, it was a bloody fortune. We had a swimming pool with a waterfall over St. Patrick’s Cathedral. And, the bottom of the pool was a painting of the apartment below, done by this incredible Venetian artist. So, it was obscene, to say the least. But, on my end, I managed to save $30,000 in two years. And I opened my own firm after this. So, I have to say that things worked out fine for me. You know, $30,000 was a lot of money at the time. And, I just opened my own firm. And, that was 40 years ago today, almost.

SSR: Congrats. So, you open the doors after doing this amazing apartment.

AT: Apartment? It was like crazy.

SSR:  Hotel. Let’s call it a hotel.

AT: Yeah. It was a fantastic place. It was really amazing.

SSR: Where did you go from there?

AT: Well, I went to a bottom floor of a brownstone at 61st Street with an assistant, my secretary by the name of Hedi. And that was my start of the business. Later on, I was joined by a young ambitious, and fun French gentleman by the name of Robert Couturier whom you probably know. Robert and I worked together for quite sometime. I opened this office. I had a couple of dollars in the bank. And, I bought a sign that said Adam D. Tihany, and there we go. So, it was a rough beginning because at the time, I was full of myself. I was energized by the fact that I had this cosmopolitan education. I could do anything. And, when people interviewed me for a project, I was quite flamboyant. I said, ‘Well, I can do anything.’ And very quickly, I learned that I’m in America here. And, people do not trust the factotum. They are concerned that you do too many things; you don’t focus on one particular thing. But I refused to pigeonhole myself. I just said, ‘No. I want be a designer in the large sense of the word.’

And so, I starved for a while. You try knocking on doors. But, we did a couple of apartments for friends, and the little shop for somebody. It was also the time where nightclubs were the thing. You know, Studio 54. And, I landed a project called Xenon, which was also one of the pioneering nightclubs of the time. In one of these alcohol-fueled nights, mornings actually, because you didn’t start talking to anybody until four, five in the morning, I meet a gentleman, who speaks with a heavy French accent, who says to me, ‘You’re a designer, oui?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Oui, oui. I know you socially. We saw you at the nightclub.’ He says, ‘Do you want to do a restaurant?’ I said, ‘What?’ Well, it turned out this gentleman was a guy by the name of Jean De Noyer. And, he had the license to open the La Coupole restaurant in New York City. I said, ‘Of course. I want do everything. Are you kidding? I mean, I’ll take any job.’ He says, ‘Well, let’s do a restaurant.’ Now, this was the end of ’79, beginning of 1980. So, La Coupole was on Park Ave South, and 32nd Street. Now, it became artisanal later. It was one of the first grand cafés in New York City. It had 220 seats. And, it was designed to the T, to the T, absolutely every detail by myself because Jean was very hands off. He had other priorities. He ran another famous restaurant at the time. And, I was given free rein.  So, I did architecture of the space, the interiors, the graphics, I designed the menus, I picked the uniforms. I did all the light fixtures, the furniture. And the place opens up in a massive snowstorm in February of 1981. And it becomes a huge hit, because Andy Warhol couldn’t get in, and it was in the paper. So again, for all of the wrong reason.

But, what happened to me was that I realized that in this microcosm of a restaurant, I can actually do everything I like to do. I can do space planning, I can do architecture. Well, I can do all of the stuff that I learned how to do in Italy. I was Italian again. So, after the place opened and became quite notorious, I went out and bought a sign that said Adam D. Tihany, Restaurant Designer. And this is the true birth of the profession. This is the true story. I mean, I figured I found something, a niche, where I can function the way I’d like to function, and nobody has that. I said restaurant designer, maybe that would allow me to be myself.

So, there you have it. This was obviously being at the right place at the right time, because it was the beginning of all the restaurant mania that we know today. I mean, this was the beginning of the grand cafés, of the design of the space that was a theater. It was not just a dining venue. The celebrity chefs started at the time. It just started to take off. And from that place, I got another phone call the next day. ‘Oh, you want to do a restaurant?” I became known as the father of restaurant design, of the early profession.

SSR:You’ve worked with some amazing chefs. I mean, Daniel Boulud, Charlie Palmer, Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges. What has it been like working with such talented people? And, what have you learned from them?

AT: I mean, if you have the opportunity to work with people that are more talented than you are, you always learn something. And I was extremely fortunate to meet early on in my career people that had the passion and the vision, and they were doing things that other people thought were crazy, nobody else should be doing it. So, I found that very energizing and very inspirational. I always say that if you can have a little bit less ego than your client, you’ll be a successful businessman. And I try to behave. For me, restaurants were portraits of my clients. They always have been. They are portraits of the chefs, not my portrait. It was my interpretation of their portrait, but it was theirs. The key, to me, was make sure that if you design somebody’s portrait or you create a custom suite for them, that it fits. That when they walk in the first day, it is their home. It is where they can perform best because it represents their creativity, their talent, their trade, their brand of hospitality. And so, as such, it became sort of my passion to study them, to spend time with them, to see how they come up with all these incredible things. And, it is very important also that the restaurant is true to the food that is being served.

It’s sort of a background to when the curtain comes up, and the main act is on your table, everything around you should focus your energy and your concentration on what you’re getting. And you should not be surprised, you should be prepared for it. So, that has become sort of my mantra and my philosophy when designing for these people. And I’m always like one step behind them, which is fine. I mean, this is not about me. There came a day in my career where it was about me. And, that was the most difficult project I’ve ever done. And that’s Remi, when I opened my own restaurant. But that’s a story for another day.

SSR: You won’t tell any bit about it?

AT: Well, at some point, I don’t know why exactly I decided to get into the restaurant business. Actually, I do know why. It was friendship with this wonderful young chef called Francesco Antonucci, who became my brother and he wanted to open his own restaurant. I used to design restaurants that he worked at. That’s how we met. So Francesco and I became close friends. When it was time for him to open a restaurant, he came to me and said, ‘Help me out. Can you find investment?’ And, for some reason, I said, ‘You know, Francesco, it’s you and me. Let’s do it together.’ That was a dark day. But I don’t go back on my word. And we opened Remi. Every possible mistake that I’ve made in the restaurant design world, I did on myself. And the most difficult thing that I found out is it’s just impossible to design your own portrait. I understand that there is a great portrait exhibit at the Hirshhorn, somewhere in London, in Washington, which I’d like to go and see, because I’m always curious. How did these artists portray themselves?

For me, a portrait of Francesco and I, in our young, nascent moment of our brand of hospitality, which we had absolutely no idea what it was going to be. So, how do you do it right? And, to boot, it was a Venetian restaurant, which is a dream project for somebody. So many references, except we’re two kids here in New York doing a Venetian restaurant with a name that’s based on the aura of the gondola. I mean, we could not have picked anything more complicated. Plus, it’s us, and everybody knows us. And so, don’t ask. The lighting got screwed up. I was so concerned about everything that I basically made every possible mistake. And then had to back up and do it. But, in the end, it really made me a better designer because I had my own lab. I had my own lab where I could experiment on what makes things work and what doesn’t. There was a point in the history of my office that every employee, every designer, had to work at the restaurant for a couple of weeks, every year, in any capacity: front of the house, back of the house, just to learn how a restaurant functions. And not to make mistakes of what the size of a service station, what’s the distance between the hot line to the dishwasher. All the things that you think you know, but you don’t know until you actually operate one.

And what happened is that some of the chefs that I ended up befriending and working with were my customers. They were our friends. I mean, professional customers. The restaurant was quite popular, and a lot of people came after work. So, Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, they all saw me as a colleague more than the guy that comes to take their money and spend it on things that they’re not sure why they need. So, we became quite friendly, and it was much easier to deal with professional chefs when you’d took off the table all the minutiae that people worry about every day, because they felt confident and comfortable that I know that they need that stuff, and I would make sure it’s there before they open.

So, in truth, it did make me a better designer. But it was a pretty traumatic experience to start with. It’s not an easy business to begin with. We ran Remi for 25 years. We had four of them in unlikely places like Mexico City and Tel Aviv. So, we did some crazy stuff. We wrote a cook book about Venetian food, and Francesco is still one of my closest friends. He’s the only partner I’ve ever had, and I never had a word with him about anything. So, when people ask me how is partnership, I keep saying wonderful.

SSR: Which not many people say about partnership.

AT: Exactly. My experience was amazing.

SSR: So, Remi turned to be your biggest mistake, but probably your greatest gift in a way at the same time?

AT: Well, absolutely.

SSR: Speaking of other spaces, when you were saying that they are a place for the chef and their food. But you’ve also, I think, pushed the boundaries a bit on what restaurants could be. You created some really iconic spaces. I’m thinking of Aureole in Las Vegas with the wine tower. Can you talk a little bit about creating theatrics within spaces that still are elegant and you know …

AT: Drama.

SSR: Yeah. Drama.

AT: Well, there are a couple of ingredients that go into the soup, as we say. And Las Vegas actually is a very good example because in my opinion Las Vegas is probably one of the most important design laboratories in America because there are two ingredients that the projects there have that are very hard to find in other place. One of them is that they have the budgets. There is money to spend on crazy stuff. And the second, which is even more important, is that the brief, most of the times, is blow away the competition.

For a designer, when somebody tells you, ‘Here is the bag with the money, and blow away the competition.’ It’s a very seductive kind of brief. But there’s also clearly some interesting demographic that’s going on in Las Vegas, and if you realize that it is a city that pays a very high premium on entertainment, and the value of entertainment, and people come to have fun. And I always say people don’t eat in restaurants because they’re hungry. They eat in restaurants because they want another experience. They want to live for three hours in another country. There’s a whole bunch of reasons for it, but it’s because of the food.

And Las Vegas is one of them. So, when you start your project in Las Vegas, you have to take in account that everything needs to be blown out of proportion a little bit. It has to be exaggerated, but at the same time, it has to celebrate this ongoing need to be entertained. And, when we started working with Charlie [Palmer] on Aureole I started adapting my typical philosophy that this is a portrait of the chef. Now, Charlie is a big guy, imposing. He’s from New York, he’s very New York. So, what would be better represent Charlie than a skyscraper.

This is how I started to think about the design of this wine tower, as this is a representation of New York big guy. And then I needed to add into it the entertainment value of we’re in Las Vegas. It just cannot be a nice skyscraper, because it’s not doing anything. And, there, in one of those nights that I couldn’t sleep and thinking about the project, I watched Mission Impossible, the first one. And, I saw Tom Cruise hanging in mid-air, in this white room on some cable. And I said, ‘Maybe we should have these wine angels flying up and down this tower, and bringing down the wine.’ Suddenly it became Cirque du Soleil meeting New York, or entertainment meeting architecture. And that’s how this thing was born. So, it is paying homage to the city. At the same time, it’s paying homage to the origin of the chef and his persona. So, it was just a little anecdote.

SSR: I love that. I mean, everyone’s process is different. But is that kind of how you start each project?

AT: I think the most important aspect of design, to me is a combination of demographics, personalities, and everything else that points to a product that is pretty much controlled by the operator, as in most successful spaces and restaurants are the ones where you can channel the mood of the people toward what you want them to see, hear, smell, taste. So, the control is extremely important. It’s moving people through space. What do they see as they come in? What do they see as they progress? And if you can control that by design, then you control the mood of the person, which is the key because if you can deliver experiences, but the more you control it, the stronger the experience will be. So, for us, it’s really about planning, but planning with keeping the eye open about everything else around you. It’s very good to know who your customer is because then you can influence a lot of things.

In the hospitality business, there are so many varieties of customers. And people that are looking for different experiences, that you can’t be everything for everybody. That’s a formula to failure. That’s why we try not to work with committees. We try not to work with decision-makers that are more than three people in one room because then you dilute every decision by trying to please more and more people, and you forget the focus.

Because at the end of the day, you don’t need to please everybody. Nothing’s going to happen if somebody leaves and they’re not happy. Yes. I don’t know. I’m a little bit of a dinosaur because I’m not subscribing 100 percent to social media, and, I know they can absolutely kill you for no reason. But they can also elevate you for no reason. So, it’s a risk. It’s a different society that we live in. But in the old days, you used to cater to the food critics. You knew what Brian Miller liked, and you knew what Gael Greene hated. It was all very scripted and pretty easy to sort of navigate if you were playing the game.

But today, my God, I wouldn’t know how to open a restaurant because you don’t know where is coming to. What is this, like, Grub Street? Who can manage all this stuff? I mean, you see the New York Times giving restaurants bad reviews. It’s packed, packed. I mean, you can’t even get in. The worse the review, the more people go. I don’t understand this stuff. So anyway, this is a sidebar, your honor.

AT: But, you try to anticipate things. But it’s not always possible. It’s really as good as you are, and as smart as you are, something may happen. Like Stacy, I can see you going to a fantastic restaurant for your anniversary with your husband. Well, you going to Per Se. You manage to get a table. Now, you know Thomas [Keller], and you know Laura, and you know that it’s going to be perfect, absolutely perfect, everything about it. So, you come in, the lighting is beautiful. You’re wearing your new clothes. You’re having a nice romantic dinner. Beautiful flowers at the table. The service is impeccable. And, lo and behold, a couple next to you are having a huge fight. Poor Thomas and Laura. They can’t control this. They did everything right except that you would leave that evening having had a bad experience. When I say there are so many variables that you can’t control. That is really a difficult act. And it’s a very, very precarious balance to hold.

SSR: It’s a fine line. I mean, you’ve seen so many things throughout your career.

AT: You think?

SSR: I think. I know. As social media becomes a big part of it, how have [restaurants] evolved throughout the last couple of decades? And what are you excited about restaurants today? Or are you excited?

AT: I’m partially responsible for this. So, I’ll take my responsibility seriously. The restaurants have become the meeting places of choice. They are public for a small fee, meaning a meal, you can walk in and sit down for a couple of hours. You’re treated like a king in some places, and the queen in others. But, you can experience something different. And, it’s relatively safe. It’s relatively well-behaved. And, to boot, you can have a meal, which in most of the times is very good. So, there are a lot of things working for it and that is not changing, especially in cities like New York where people have crammed apartments. They hardly have time to cook for themselves, and even if they do, they don’t want to be by themselves. So, going out to public spaces, while nightclubs and bars could be a little bit more edgy, restaurants are safe. Restaurants are a relatively good place where you can socialize. And you walk to any restaurant, you see a large group of people having a good time. So, it is an important social service, let’s put it this way for lack of a better description. And it is true for many cities.

The other side of it is that restaurants tend to sort of represent a little bit who frequents them. So, there are certain crowds that go to certain kinds of restaurants. There’s the steak house crowd, there’s the white tablecloth crowd, there’s the bistro crowd. It’s a certain strata of social behavior, which mean that if you travel, and let’s say you’re going from New York to Los Angeles, and you are a steak house person, you will go to a steak house in Los Angeles. Chances are you’ll meet people that are like you, which is very comforting if you travel alone, especially. If you want to look for your kind of people in a safe environment, restaurants pretty much fit that role, in a way. People don’t think about it that way. But, on a very high-end social place, where the rich people congregate, you’ll find exactly the same people in New York, in Paris, in London, in Tokyo. They’re all in the same places. And you know the names of these places, and you know how to get in, and you know who to call to get in. So they’re sort of clubs that are open to everybody. They’re not private. And it’s an interesting social conundrum. And I don’t think that will change. As long as they are functioning as a safe haven to people who wan to just go out and mingle and meet, I think they will continue to strive.

SSR: That was an interesting point. I’ve never really thought of it that way. So, you haven’t just done restaurants.

AT: No.

SSR: You have a very large portfolio of hotels as well, a lot of signature ones, including two really great renovations recently, the Breakers in Florida, which is ongoing. And then, the Oberoi in New Delhi. What was it like to redo such known and beloved properties?

AT: It’s a responsibility. On one hand, you want to move the dial forward. And on the other hand, you want to keep some of the DNA that made these places magical. So it’s a fine balancing act. We were very fortunate to work, besides the Breakers and the Oberoi, I redid the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. It’s another one of those, ‘Oh, my God.’ But if you think that’s difficult, try the King David in Jerusalem, which happened.

The more iconic the hotel is, the more delicate is the balance because the old school wants nothing to change. They want to come back to something that is familiar because that’s what they’re paying for. The young clientele, on the other hand, which doesn’t know the past, wants modern-day comfort and they come with the fantasy in mind of what this place has been, except that they don’t want leaky faucets, they don’t want beds that don’t have 400 thread count sheets. They want all their modern-day comforts, at the same time they want some of the history to rub off. But they’re not going just because of the history. They’re going because they want to create the next generation of history. So, it’s a challenge. And I love that. None of these renovations basically resulted in gut job, where you did something totally new and that you throw people off balance. So, there are certain things that are worth keeping, and there are certain things that need to move forward. And it’s an art to try to figure out what’s what, and how much you can push.

It’s interesting when you work with the owners, you always work with one or two generations of owners. You work with the old man that started the whole thing, and his son and nephews and staff that are carrying the ball forward. And it’s interesting because I’ve been in some situations where the third generation is more conservative than the first. They want to go back to the roots. Sometimes the third generation is not visionary. As they say, if you’re first generation, your son will make the business so-so and your grandson will ruin it. But you do find often that when it goes after the third generation, they start to be a little bit more conservative because they missed this nostalgia, this mystery that once made the place so great. And some of it is restorable, but a lot of it isn’t. At the end of the day, you deal with perceptions more than reality. And the new customers that come, they have a perception of a place. They’ve never been there before. And you have to understand what that perception is to make sure that the product is correct.

But I love working with these old properties because you dig in and you dig in and you find all kinds of stories and things that you can celebrate and pull out and just turn the dial back but without turning anything else back. So, it’s fun.

SSR: And, along the same lines, you’ve worked on the Four Seasons, One&Only, Mandarin Oriental. How has luxury changed with this new generations that are starting to travel? And how have you looked at it from what it once was to what it should be today?

AT: Well, how does they say this? Good question, when you need to think about something. I think you have to separate two things. One is the hardware, and the other is the software. And the software is much more important than the hardware, as you know. Not just in computers but also in hospitality. It’s all about people because at the end of the day, the available hardware is pretty much out there.

And there are some wonderful designers in the world and wonderful operators and they know what a good carpet is, what good lighting, what good art. Each one has different taste levels stuff but the composition is pretty much the same. You come into a room, you have a bed, you have a desk, you have a chair, you have a television, you have a bathroom. We all have it. Some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller, some of them are green, some are blue, orange, beige. That’s not the point. The point is your comfort. Luxury to some people has to do with space. These are the people that are deprived of space most of the time. Sometimes it has to do with art; sometimes it has to do with quality of materials. But it always has to with service. That is the secret ingredient. It’s the software that we talk about.

I mean, you come to a room at night, you want to make sure that the lighting works. If you want to read a book, that you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t find the switch, that the mattress is good, that the air conditioning is not blowing on your neck, it just cools the room and doesn’t give you an appointment with the chiropractor. When you go to the bathroom, you want to make sure you don’t bump into something, if you have to use the facility at night, and if you open you shower, you want nice pressure, you want hot water.

I mean, this is basic. There’s no mystery about it. I mean, sometimes technology works, sometimes it doesn’t. It works when it’s simple. It doesn’t work when you need an engineer to sleep next to you to turn on and off the air conditioning and the light because it’s on some kind of mysterious iPad that you don’t even where it is. And you wake up in the middle of the night, you don’t know what to push.

But we all know this. We all have this at the tip of our fingers. But what the magic sauce is, when you pick up that phone, and say, ‘Mr. Tihany.’ I can anticipate your wishes five minutes before you can. That’s priceless. So, if you can find that luxury—and that is true luxury, that people care about you. They care about your wellbeing, they care about service, and they care about making sure that you have everything you need, when you need it and even a couple of minutes before that. I don’t think that’s changing, it will continue evolving. Depends on what level of luxury you want to be in. The kind word, the attention, that’s what it’s all about for me.

SSR: Is there anything as a designer working on a hotel that you can do to help that or is that just all in the operations end?

AT: I can do the hardware. And, I do it pretty well. We have sources and resources that are constantly evolving and making things better and more safe and more environmentally friendly and proper. But, I don’t train the staff. That’s why I haven’t opened a hotel yet because I had a restaurant for 25 years, and I was involved with this all the time.

But that’s the key. I mean, the key is the people, really. There’s no question about it. And who gets the better people? Who keeps the better people? Familiarity. If you travel, you’re a person of means, and let’s say every year you go to the same resort. You have small children that are growing. You like going to the same place. Why do you go back? You go back because they know, remember you, “Stacy Shoemaker, welcome. VP, editor in chief. Your table is ready. It’s at the same spot that you found it last year. We remember that you like sesame bread and not poppy.” That’s why you come back because the moment you get on an airplane to fly to that place, you’re already on vacation. You don’t have to get there to be on vacation. So if you can add the six-hour flight that it takes you to get to where you’re going to your vacation time, that’s a big bonus and you extended it for a couple of days, one way each place. So, because you know what you’re going to get, you’re looking forward it, you know that it pleases you. It’s where you want to be. That’s why people go back and forth to the same places, because of this kind of this secret sauce.

SSR: That’s very chill. But, you’ve also extended into the cruise ship industry.

AT: Extended. Extended what?

SSR: Your talents. You’ve given your talents to the cruise ship industry. And you’ve had a really powerful impact. I think the whole industry is going through somewhat of a renaissance, which is exciting, I think, for everyone. What do you like about designing cruise ships, and is there one that you’re really excited about or one that just opened that you’re excited about?

AT: What I like about cruise ships is that you have a captive audience. That’s what I like. It’s to design for people that I know that can’t go any place else. For a week, they can’t get off. Or if they can get off, they will come back. I find that very exciting and challenging to create a project where every single thing that you do needs to surprise and delight. Now, how do you surprise and delight people that keep coming back to the same spaces over and over again? That’s what excites me. I like to do that.

I like this whole process of discovery, where you think you know everything, but you don’t. And everyday you discover something else that nobody told you about, and you say, ‘You know what? I’m the only one who knows about this. I’m not going to tell anyone.’ That kind of stuff. So, I like that aspect of the cruise ship, is that confined environment where you truly control everybody’s mood all the time.

I mean, I like problems. I like problem-solving. And there are a lot of problems working on these big ships and the small ships. There are a lot of constraints, a lot things that you need to overcome. Chief amongst them maybe is the ceiling heights, which are very confined. How do you make people not feel that they the ceiling is coming down on them all the time, that you’re not in a really small steel box instead of a luxurious cabin.

I like all these things. And it’s interesting working with different brands. Again, here you have a very specific type of customer per brand because they have a very elaborate and professional groups of people that identify all the staff, and you have market research. You have a lot of data, much more than you have on land, because that’s the way they’re set up, and they need to put a point of difference between all the brands and not everybody is selling the same product. So, you do have a very good profile of your customer, which means it makes it easier to design if you know who you’re designing for. So, all of these things are very exciting for me.

I don’t know if you know, but I have a small studio. We are 15 people. I speak as if I ran a massive cooperation, but that’s not the case. We have a very artisanal and handmade small studio. So, we can’t work on very big projects. It drains all of our resources. We design projects that suit our temperament and our scale. And they tend to be smaller ships. They’re not the massive ships. There are different categories of cruise ships. There are the small ones, medium, large, extra large. We focus on the small ones, and the small ones tend to be very luxurious. So, we designed the Seabourn brand, the two latest ships, the Encore and the Ovation. The Ovation was just introduced six months ago. That is a 300 cabin ultra-luxury cruiser. So, that’s pretty much a good scale of a project for us. At the same time, I was appointed creative director for two major ships, extra large and large. Once is the Costa and the other one is Cunard.

So, creative director means that I get to do all the fun stuff. I hire the designers. And they work for me, basically. I dictate the style. Costa is a very interesting product. The ship actually is a 2,400 cabin cruiser, which means when the ship leaves port, it has more than 8,000 people on board. It has numerous restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters, so on and so forth. So, it’s a massive undertaking.

SSR: It’s a small city.

AT: It is. It’s a big city in Italy. It’s a small city in China, very small. So, there my role as creative director was to set the concept, which is very close to my heart, and I think it’s going to take us back to the beginning of the interview. It’s Italy’s finest. So, everything is based on Italy’s finest. I designed on the ship, just one little component, which will be the first Italian design museum on a ship, ever.

So, I have beautiful little museum that features products, furniture, architecture, fashion, and automotive, all celebrating Italian design. But it’s an actual museum. So, that is sort of the summary of what we’re doing on the ship. And it’s a museum designed pretty much for children because the children bring the parents. They come to see all the little things, and the car models. So, it’s a pretty exciting project.

Also the Cunard ship is the original transatlantic [ship], Queen Mary, Queen Victoria. So, they’re building a new ship, which I am the creative director of, putting together the designers and coaching them on bringing a new expression of Art Deco to the market, which was the ships kept evolving. There’s an old perception of what the ship, but this would be the new generation of transatlantic luxury.

SSR: That’s great. What was it like being able to chose designers?

AT: Great. I mean, obviously I have a lot of colleagues out there, which I appreciate their work, and I love their style and what they do. And it’s nice to bring forth names of people that you respect and you want to work with. But at the beginning, it was a little strange for them more than for me. They said, ‘Why is our competitor or colleague calling us?’ What was more of a challenge is you bring them in to work together and for the first six months, they behave as if it’s a competition, like each one has to outdo the next. My job is to try to make sure they stop thinking about it as a competition and start appreciating the fact that it is a collaboration.

So, for Costa, I hired Jeffery Beers, David Rockwell and Studio Dordoni from Milan because the idea was to hire an Italian to do the hotel portion, the cabins, because I wanted all the furniture to be designed by Italians and made in Italy. So, we’re working with Flos, with Molteni, Rubelli frabics. It’s all very Italian product.

And then, for the public spaces, the Americans are very good at entertainment, Rockwell, in restaurants, Jeffery. And I’ve known them for years. I mean, they’re colleagues of mine. So, we formed this very friendly and fun group. The ship is almost done. It’s been two and a half years in the making.

And Cunard is mostly European companies. I like to create a little tension between them. So in my opinion, there is not this aspect of competition, but this aspect of what do they bring from their own culture that can influence each other. Sometimes it elevates one, and lowers it, which is fine because you have to find a balance at the end. Because the ship at the end, it’s pretty consistent. So, I have David Collins and Richmond from London. And I brought in Sybille de Margerie from Paris to give a little bit of a French flair, alittle bit of Sybillian discipline to the group. And we are doing some interesting stuff there.

SSR: Sounds like a lot of fun. So, in closing, looking back over these 40 years, what do you think has been your secret to success? You’re able to stay in this industry that has a lot of ups and downs, successfully, and fair through it as well as you have.

AT: Besides my charm and talent?

SSR: Besides that, yes, obviously. You could leave it at that?

AT: I think what kept us in business all these years was a very early on decision from my part to be present at all times when it comes to the design, and not to grow the company to the point that it distances me from the design itself. I realized that if I have more than 15 people, I start becoming a manager and not a designer. I wanted to keep my role as creative director of my company and be involved in every project. And I kept it small. We’ve never been any bigger. By focusing predominantly on luxury, whether it’s a restaurant, hotel, ship of the luxury segment, we sort of found an inflation-proof business. There’s always work for 15 people in this sector. Whether the economy is up or down, there’s always work.

The other thing is that we are extremely mobile and international. We go where the project is. So that’s second aspect of being still in business after all these years. The third one is that because we’re small, we have the luxury to pick and choose our projects. I made a commitment to my people not to take on projects in places they don’t want to work in. So I try to focus on projects that are relevant, that are interesting, but they’re also in places where people can learn something, they’re excited to go to. I mean, I can’t start to tell you how many fights there were in the office to go to India to do the Oberoi project. There were people that were: ‘I want to go, I want to go. I want to go.’ Now, if this was in Shenzhen, nobody would raise their hand. My people don’t want to go to China. I don’t know why. If you have that commitment to your people, and that respect, then I think people recognize that they have the opportunity to do some great projects and they stay and you can create a company that has legs.

SSR: Well, that’s easier said than done. So, congrats.

AT: It’s just a matter of discipline. You really have to stick to it. There are many times we had the temptation of taking on some massive projects and hire another 20 people. I don’t hire and fire people because I have projects. I want to keep a studio that works no matter what. And my commitment is if the economy is up or down, you guys have a job. You don’t have to worry about getting fired because somebody didn’t give us a project. That’s not on the table.

SSR: That’s kind of amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here.

AT: Thank you.

SSR: As always, it’s such a pleasure to chat with you. We really appreciate it.