Thad Hayes Style Compass
By Marcia Sherrill

Named a Dean of Design by Architectural Digest in 2005, Thad Hayes is an innovator and visionary who is inspiring the next generation of designers and enthusiasts.

Hayes’ singular design style is a juxtaposition of opposites. His work respects both the traditional in design as it is made manifest in much of American 18th-century architecture (like Jefferson’s Monticello) and furniture (Chippendale chairs) as well as the avant-garde of postwar American design, especially as it was practiced during the mid-century period by people like Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, and Albert Frey. Hayes says, “Both aesthetics developed within a time of expansion, experiment, and exuberance in American life. They were times of new beginnings and I believe that every interior should have some of that spirit.” And it is to spirits and essences that he is ineluctably drawn – much he attributes to his family and his childhood in the deepest South.

Hayes’ childhood in Baton Rogue, Lousisiana possesses a Tennessee Williams-esque quality. He admits, “My mother was a math teacher, and my father drove a tow truck and I hid that for many years, and although they divorced quite early, my father was an interesting man who always bought antiques so I was exposed early to 18th and 19th century furniture.” He remembers the family’s shared obsession with gardens saying, “Including me and my 2 brothers, the family has always been interested in flowers, gardens, and antiques. We were raised to appreciate gardens and when we visited relatives we would pile the back of the car with cuttings.” With his brother Paul, a casualty in the AIDS epidemic, Hayes carries on the family legacy with brother, Lance, a floral designer of renown in Baton Rouge.

He says, “Growing up I had two distinct influences. These influences were happening simultaneous with one another and dealt with two ideas and aesthetics. While, as a family, we would take day trips to see the great plantations homes of the south as well as periodic trips to New Orleans my mother subscribed to many home design and decorating magazines in the sixties. The clean simple lined architecture and interiors were new and fresh to me and I became obsessed with Modern and Contemporary architecture. “

Hayes accelerated his studies to graduated early from high school and set out directly to Louisiana State University. His first classes were in Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture – courses that were spot-on perfect choices as they colored and influenced his life and future stellar career. Hayes recalls, “It was the 70’s and almost all of the professors were from Harvard. It was an unparalleled program that I happened upon by accident and one that provided me a rich experience. Most people think landscape architecture is about placing plant material in ground, no more than this. On the contrary, the world I entered back then, was a universe of design in every form.”

Graduating from L.S.U., Hayes rushed north to a New York City that was mired in a recession. The services of a fresh out of college landscape architect was not in great demand, so the intrepid but unemployed Hayes turned to Tim Du Val who owned “Plant Specialist,” and together the pair designed terraces, rooftops, and townhouse gardens. Then entered dream client: Robert De Niro with his rooftop garden in Tribeca. This alone made Hayes was an “almost” celebrity with people back in Baton Rouge who found it hard to believe that a hometown boy could work for a movie star. Hayes laughingly remembers, “People thought I was making this stuff up!”

Meeting interior designers on his various Plant Specialist projects, Hayes thought, “I want to do that!” It had not escaped his attention that on various projects, the interior designers were both treated better and were far better dressed. Hayes quickly enrolled in the 3rd year program at Parsons, and shortly after, went to work at Bray-Schairble Design where he was given his first job in design. In 1985, having worked for Bray-Schairble for three years, Hayes ventured on to establish his own firm, Thad Hayes, Inc. – now in its 24th year. Since the year 2000, Thad Hayes, Inc. has earned AD 100 status, but he has never wandered far from his earliest memories.

Thad Hayes’ Style Compass Q & A for 1st Dibs

FASHION: Usually I gravitate toward the opposite of fashion, the path of least resistance.   I wear Levi and Gap jeans. White, navy, black, and grey cotton shirts of all price ranges and from almost any place as long as they are simple and the buttons match the fabric. Grey, black and navy sport coats and suits from Calvin Klein on Madison and periodically a suit from Comme de Garcon.  White oxford cloth boxers from Brooks. And always a ½ boot dark tan, brown and black.
FABRICS: Gretchen Bellinger cotton velvets and La Scala mohair.  Leather from Edelman. Fortuny grays, browns, taupes.   Sam Kasten custom hand woven fabrics.

ENTERTAINING: For my five year old and his regular play dates, my classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Potato bread lightly toasted, thin layer creamy peanut butter, thin layer “farmers market strawberry preserve”. Cut off the crust and cut into three strips.  Serve on vintage charcoal Russel Wright plates.

COLOR: Glorious Grey from Oyster to Charcoal.  I’m known for being conservative except when politics is concerned.

TRAVEL: I like visiting New Orleans and Venice for similar reasons.  They both were born from the sea.  They have strong religious foundations, are decadent, and have knockout food.

GARDENING/FLORAL: My undergraduate degree is landscape architecture and my brother, Lance, has a floral design business in Louisiana.   My late brother, Paul, was a floral designer and garden designer.  We were raised with a strong awareness and sensitivity to the landscape and of gardens so I have strong feelings about such things. I personally don’t care for detailed fussy gardens.  Strong simple gestures, sweeping lawns and meadows, stands of trees, masses of shrubs, simple stone or grass paths, and architectural garden and retaining walls I find elegant and expansive. In general a limited palette of plant material and architectural materials is what I favor. For 24 years I’ve been styling my work with flowers that I select and usually arrange.  I typically use a single type flower in each arrangement because I could never figure out how to mix them up with a result that I like.  Whatever is seasonal and will last is what I select in the flower market and in my own garden.  The act of doing this, the cutting and placement in the container and reworking if necessary, has become, as I’ve gotten older, very satisfying.

ART/ DESIGN: My eye responds well to minimal art. My mind responds well to conceptual and performance art. My heart responds well to films. Walter de Maria’s “The Broken Kilometer “(1979) at the New York Earth Room,(The Lightning Field). The Broken Kilometer was installed the year I moved to New York, 1979. I happened upon it by chance walking down West Broadway one Saturday.  I was alone in the room for the experience. No one really went down to Soho then.   The piece really changed the way I looked at things.

Eero Saarinen  (everything he designed).  I admire the way each project reflected the program and user and was conceptually very different.  He died fairly young.  I think if he had lived longer he along with Frank Lloyd Wright would be the two most important 20th century American architects.

Philip Johnson and Mark Rothko (Rothko Chapel) Houston, Texas.    Very powerful paintings in a simple octagon shell. Amiens Cathedral, Amiens, France.

MOVIE: “A Member of the Wedding”(book by Carson McCullers). Filmed like a play, which it was first, with simple camera work shot in black and white.  A small, beautifully acted movie starring Ethel Waters, Julie Harris, and Brandon de Wilde.  Although there is no direct identification from my own childhood, it seems oddly familiar whenever I see it.

GIFT: National Audubon Society field guides (any and all of them)

SHORT STORY: Why I live at the P.O. (Eudora Welty). Bob Bray introduced me to this short story years ago.  He often reads it out loud over the telephone to friends, sometimes often.  It is a warm, charming, turbulent, and at times funny story of a family in China Grove, Mississippi.  Any designer or architect will get a chuckle at the end.

BOOKS: To Kill a Mockingbird, (Harper Lee), Other Voices, Other Rooms, (Truman Capote), O Pioneer, (Willa Cather), I Am That I Am: A Tribute to Sri Nisargadatta, (Stephen H. Wolinski and Nisargadatta)

CD: Renee Cologne,  Rock and Roll Housewife