The Design 100
Great design is no longer reserved solely for museum-worthy products, as multitasking designers turn their attention to everything from books to artisanal food, and from lighting to transportation
Thomas O'Brien
Growing up as the son of an IBM executive in upstate New York must have given classic American designer O'Brien, 46, a head for business. Following a stint as a creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren, he set up shop in 1992 in New York City's SoHo, where he combined his design atelier with his furniture shop, Aero. The shop quickly became a destination for design aficionados, and soon O'Brien was creating interiors for tastemakers like Giorgio Armani as well as luxury hotels like 60 Thompson. But it was his 2005 Vintage Modern line for Target that lent mass appeal to his name. These days, with tableware for Reed & Barton and lighting for Visual Comfort, there's little in the home market that this retro-modernist doesn't have a hand in. —Deirdre van Dyk
View the full list for "The Design 100"Latest Lists
Most Popular »
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- The Gospel of Glee: Is It Anti-Christian?
- Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
- In His Cave, a Palestinian Farmer Makes a Stand
- Pie
- Couple Crashes Obama's State Dinner
- Unemployment
- When Thanksgiving Comes to Afghanistan
- How a Little Town in Peru Is Becoming a Hotspot
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- The Gospel of Glee: Is It Anti-Christian?
- When Thanksgiving Comes to Afghanistan
- Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
- Zhu Zhu Mania: Hamster Toys Are Ruling Christmas
- In His Cave, a Palestinian Farmer Makes a Stand
- Ahmadinejad in Brazil: Why Lula Defies the U.S.
- How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time
- One Year After the Mumbai Massacre, a Trial Plods On
RSS