A life designed

Within a few weeks of graduating from LSU, an environmental design degree in hand, Thad Hayes had bolted for New York City and was looking for work. This was 1979, and the city, he says, was depressed. The buildings black and wrapped in trash. Jobs scarcer than they are today.

The 23-year-old ended up freelancing on various garden projects, basically hauling bags of soil through apartment buildings. “It was still possible for a young person to be poor, live in Manhattan, have a good time and eat well,” he says.

But those small-scale jobs led to his first of many superstar clients when he was hired to design Robert De Niro’s Tribeca rooftop with Tim DuVal.

Thirty years on, Hayes, 53, operates his own design firm overlooking Bryant Park. Since May he has been designing the residence of fashion icon Marc Jacobs. The streets may be a little cleaner, and Times Square a theme park, but the city isn’t any less noisy and intense than it was when Hayes first arrived three decades ago. Since starting his own firm in 1985 he has made a name for himself by skillfully transforming Manhattan’s brownstones, lofts and high-rise condos into serene, orderly escapes from the chaotic streets below.

“My work really is a response to what I’m trying to achieve in life, which is the opposite of chaos,” Hayes says. “It’s something disciplined. And I think my clients are seeking simpler environments. They feel their lives are too busy and hectic.”

Hayes’ older brother Lance, a florist in Baton Rouge, describes the style as methodical and uncluttered. “It’s not the look we may be used to down here,” he says.

Unlike many other designers, Hayes’s portfolio is rarely the result of intuition or impulse. It is by design that everything works. Infamously detail-oriented, he approaches each project analytically.

And he likes being brought in on projects as early as possible, because the more collaboration he gets with architects, painters, cabinetmakers and lighting specialists, the better. “Otherwise it’s just like cosmetic fixes,” he says. His average project lasts 18 months, though they can go much longer. The first home featured in his gorgeously illustrated new coffee-table book, The Tailored Interior, is an elegant Central Park-facing apartment on Fifth Avenue that took two years to complete. The two-story beach house he designed in Water Mill for the same Japanese-American couple took three years.

“I don’t delegate,” says Hayes, whose small firm includes an architect and just a few designers and assistants, allowing him to manage each project personally. “I can’t help myself. It’s a very disciplined self-editing process, and I guess it comes from a deep-seeded need, or a desire within myself. I’m always searching for it.”

Lance Hayes says this search was greatly affected by his brother’s move to New York City.

“There’s not a lot of green space in the city to express yourself as a landscape architect,” he says. “He was always into design, but the interiors came when he finally got up there.”

Born in Marksville, Hayes grew up in Baton Rouge in the 1960s and ’70s. His mother was a public school teacher and also worked part-time at Sears. She subscribed to architecture magazines and was always tackling home improvement projects.

“My father drove a tow truck, but he also collected antiques,” Hayes says. “He was this tough exterior, but also had a great eye for beautiful things. I learned a lot from both of my parents.”

Hayes’ parents divorced when he was in the second grade. After the split, Hayes’ mother raised three boys on her own. She enrolled Thad, her youngest, in art lessons and often would pack the kids up with a picnic lunch and make road trips to nearby plantations like Oak Alley and Oakley House. The minimal but grand antebellum spaces captured his young imagination. “Those plantations were a big inspiration to me, but so was all the new construction happening in Baton Rouge in the ’70s,” he recalls.

By contrast, visits to his father’s house were like walking through a storehouse of Asian furniture, ship anchors and other ephemera piled and stacked in every nook and cranny. The look was completely opposite to the minimalist, color-conservative spaces Hayes designs today.

“There’s no bad color; it just depends on how you use it,” Hayes says. “Eighty percent of my clients have large art collections, and strong colors can interfere with art. I have to be sensitive to that.”

A few years ago, Hayes moved out of New York City. Though he takes the train to Manhattan daily, he lives in quiet Montclair, N.J., with his partner, Atomic Wings owner Adam Lippin, and their adopted son Daniel. It’s a better community in which to raise a young child, he says, though he’ll always be fascinated by the city. But don’t think that living in the suburbs has slowed Hayes any. Every few months he brings Daniel to Baton Rouge to visit his brother and his 85-year-old mother. Architectural Digest recently named him a “Dean of Design,” and he is in the midst of several time-intensive projects.

“I’m actually busy right now, which is a great thing, because a lot of people aren’t,” Hayes says. There’s the task of adjoining two 19th-century mansions on Boston’s posh Commonwealth Avenue, and of course Marc Jacobs’ four-story brownstone, garden and rooftop in the West Village.

“Marc is very particular and involved, which is good,” Hayes says. “If a client is too easy and agreeable, you can get lazy. Marc and I push each other. I like clients that are demanding. They keep you on your toes.”