Thom Filicia

Thom Filicia born 17 May 1969

Thom Filicia was the interior design expert on the American television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He is also a co-author of a book based on the show.

Raised in Syracuse, New York, Filicia attended Syracuse University's Art and Design school in the college of Visual and Performing Arts, gaining a BA in interior design.

His design firm, Thom Filicia Inc., has completed both residential and commercial work in metropolitan New York, the Hamptons, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Florida, California, Utah and Bermuda. His firm was chosen as the exclusive design firm for the US Pavilion at the 2005 World's Fair. He describes his decorating style as modern classicism.

Filicia gained great exposure when he became the interior design expert on the TV reality show Queer Eye in 2003. He and his designs have been the subject of many magazine articles and he has frequently appeared as a guest expert on many American TV shows.

He also is co-author of the New York Times best-selling book, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab Five's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better.

In 2006 he was chosen as one of House Beautiful's Top 100 American Designers and House & Garden's Top 50 'Tastemakers'.

Filicia is currently working on a home makeover show for the Style Network, titled Dress My Nest.

He is also working on his own furniture and home collections, and has published a how-to book on interiors, titled Thom Filicia Style.

Oliver Messel

Oliver Messel born 13 January 1904 (d. 1978)

Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century.

Messel was born in London, the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Messel and Maud, the only daughter of Linley Sambourne, the eminent illustrator and contributor to Punch magazine. He was educated at Hawtreys, a boarding preparatory school in Kent, Eton — where his classmates included Harold Acton, and Brian Howard — and at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College.

After completing his studies, he became a portrait painter and commissions for theatre work soon followed, beginning with his designing the masks for a London production of Serge Diaghilev's ballet Zephyr et Flore (1925). Subsequently, he created masks, costumes, and sets — many of which have been preserved by the Theatre Museum, London — for various works staged by C. B. Cochran's revues through the late 1920s and early 1930s. He socialised with London society's most glamorous and celebrated figures, including Noel Coward, Peter Watson and his one-time love rival Cecil Beaton.

In 1953, he was commissioned to design the decor for a suite at London's elegant Dorchester Hotel, one in which he would be happy to live himself. The lavishly ornate Oliver Messel Suite combines baroque and rococo styles with modernist sensibility and a considerable dose of fantasy. The suite, along with other suites that he designed in the Dorchester, are preserved as part of Britain's national heritage. It was restored in the 1980s by many of the original craftsmen, overseen by Messel's nephew, Lord Snowdon (Anthony Armstrong-Jones), the former husband of Princess Margaret.

Oliver Messel came from a wealthy, well-connected family and when his nephew, Anthony Armstrong-Jones married HRH Princess Margaret, a life-long relationship with the British royalty began. Messel was later to design Princess Margaret’s home on Mustique Island in The Grenadines. In 1959, Messel, exhausted by a demanding theatre season and recurring arthritis, retreated to Barbados and the lush beauty of the eastern Caribbean. He was 55 and at the peak of a career in which he had dazzled three decades of theatre-goers with his fantastic, romantic and inspired stage sets and costumes. The warmth, colour and vibrancy of the tropics seemed to liberate new sources of energy and imagination, leading him to what would eventually become a whole new career in designing, building and transforming homes. Not content to rest there, he also designed many furnishings for these homes, particularly for outdoor use.

Messel bought an existing house called Maddox, a simple bay house perched above a small beach on the St James coast. With the help of his companion Riis-Hansen and a Barbadian staff, he gradually transformed it using all the trademarks of his theatrical design: slender Greek columns, flattened arches, white-on-white interiors splashed with bright spots of colour, elaborate plaster mouldings - an easy mix of baroque and classical. It was his use of the materials and traditions of island architecture that was truly innovative. Wealthy friends clamoured for Messel to design houses for them, both on Barbados and Mustique He designed and supervised the renovations of many houses. He designed and built Mango Bay from scratch and was commissioned by the Barbados government to restore the old British officers' Garrison headquarters in Queens Park, creating an elegant adaptation of it to a theatre and art gallery.

He would probably have gone on to do much more on Barbados, but was lured away by his friend Colin Tennant, Baron Glenconner and his private island home, Mustique. Glenconner commissioned Messel to design all the houses built on the island. Between 1960 and 1978 Messel created some 30 house plans, of which over 18 have so far been built - a tangible and lasting tribute to his genius. But Barbados remained his first island love and his home, and he died there in 1978, at the age of 74.

One lasting legacy is that his preferred light sage green shade of paint, now known as 'Messel Green' by paint companies in the Caribbean, has been immortalised as many property owners choose this colour for the it’s quintessential Caribbean-ness.

William Haines

William Haines born 2 January 1900 (d. 1973)

William Haines was an American film actor who was one of the most notable film stars of the silent era - who gave it all up for love.

Born Charles William Haines to a wealthy family in Staunton, Virginia, Haines left home at the age of 14 - running away with another young man Haines referred to as his 'boyfriend' - and moved eventually to New York City. After winning a talent contest he moved to Hollywood where he played bit parts for several years until MGM Studios began casting him in more prominent roles.

By 1925 he was MGM's most important male star, and his films were very profitable for the studio. He was cultivated as a romantic leading man, and his combination of good looks and flair for comedy won him many fans. He made a career out of playing wise-cracking young athletic types whose large egos hold them back until an attitude adjustment leads to success.

Haines lived openly as a homosexual - from 1926 with Jimmy Shields, whom he had met when Shields was his stand-in during the production of a film. Studio publicists were able to keep Haines' sexual orientation from the press.

In 1933, Haines was arrested in a YMCA with a sailor he had picked up in Los Angeles' Pershing Square. Louis B. Mayer, the studio head at MGM, delivered an ultimatum to Haines: choose between a phony or lavender marriage, or his relationship with Shields. Haines chose Shields (they were ultimately together for 50 years). Mayer subsequently fired Haines and terminated his contract, quickly recasting Robert Montgomery in roles that had been planned for Haines. Haines did make a few minor films at Poverty Row studios, then retired from film. His final films were made with Mascot Pictures, Young and Beautiful and the ironically named The Marines Are Coming made in 1934.

Haines and Shields began a successful career as interior designers and antique dealers. Among their early clients were friends such as Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard, Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst. Their lives were disrupted in 1936 when members of the White Legion wearing hoods to hide their faces, dragged the two men from their home and beat them, because a neighbour had accused the two of propositioning his son. Crawford, along with other stars such as Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis and Charles Boyer urged the men to report this to the police. Marion Davies asked Hearst to use his influence to ensure the neighbours were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but ultimately Haines and Shields chose not to report the incident.

The couple finally settled into the Hollywood community in Malibu, and their business prospered until their retirement in the early 1970s, except for a brief interruption when Haines served in World War II. Their long list of clients included Ronald and Nancy Reagan when Reagan was governor of California.

Haines never returned to films. Gloria Swanson extended him a personal invitation to appear with her in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950) but he declined.

Haines and Shields remained together for the rest of their lives. Joan Crawford (a lifelong friend) described them as 'the happiest married couple in Hollywood'.

Haines died from lung cancer in Santa Monica, California at the age of 73. Soon afterward, Shields, who suffered from what many believe to be Alzheimer's Disease, put on Haines' pyjamas, took an overdose of pills, and crawled into their bed to die. They were interred side by side in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery.

William Haines has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7012 Hollywood Boulevard.

William Haines official site
William Haines Photo Gallery