About Tom
The Designer Behind the World’s Most Celebrated Nights
For decades, Tom Noel has designed the celebrations of kings and queens, heads of state and the most famous people on earth. Now he wants everyone else to have one, without the complexity or the price tag.
On the night the Forbidden City turned red, fifteen hundred guests walked in past two hundred lanterns, each one held by a greeter in palace dress. The Beijing Philharmonic played while cocktails and street food came around. A forty-foot dragon led the crowd to dinner in a clear tent, where a chef from the St. Regis Hong Kong served sixteen courses. General Wesley Clark and former President Bill Clinton gave the opening remarks. Lionel Richie sang as dessert came out.
Tom Noel was the first American designer given creative access to the Forbidden City. It is the kind of evening he has built his name on, and the kind most people will only ever read about. He has spent the latest chapter of his career trying to change that.
A Showroom Education
Tom grew up around design. His father was considered one of the ten best interior designers in America in his day and founded the contemporary furniture showroom now known as Holly Hunt. His grandfather was a chemical engineer at 3M and was inducted into the company's Carlton Society. Tom started in the family business young, learning color, texture, light and space.
Robert Isabell, the legendary New York event designer and a family friend, offered him the job of overseeing production of the Miller and von Furstenberg wedding. Tom saw at once that everything he knew about rooms applied to a room built for a single night. Under Isabell he learned that an original idea is worth little without complete command of the production behind it.
Partners
A mutual friend introduced him to the late Philip Baloun, and the two became partners and close friends. Together they produced the White wedding, the Taubman wedding, the Soros Millennium party and American Express's 150th anniversary at Madison Square Garden.
Tom then went out on his own, founding Event Design Associates in 2002. In its first year the firm designed five large parties at the Cannes Film Festival, and it worked on the UBS Cup from the first edition. Event Design Incorporated followed, built on one idea: the best people in design and production on one team, so a client never has to stitch the pieces together.
“Designer Thomas Noel continues with Broadway-worthy set designs!”
The Rooms the World Watched
His work has included the weddings of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Lionel Richie, and Estée Lauder's granddaughter. He has designed Prince Pavlos's birthday celebration, the Met Gala, the U.S. Open, Art Basel and events for Vogue, and private occasions for Giorgio Armani and Valentino.
For every name that can be printed here, there are many more that never will be. Tom works under strict confidentiality, and that discretion is why royal families, heads of state, former presidents and the leaders of global business have trusted him, including with productions inside the White House.
In New York and Miami he designed The Wedding Salon, the luxury bridal show launched with Martha Stewart Weddings in 2004. His events have been covered by ABC, CBS, NBC, Good Morning America, The New York Times and Vogue, and several publications have named him one of the top event designers in the world. Galas for the Robin Hood Foundation, the Red Cross and others have helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Tom Noel has been conjuring galas for nearly 15 years, helping raise millions for the philanthropy's arts and education programs.”
The Palaces
Tom works from New York and Miami, but the work rarely stays there. At the Palace of Versailles, guests in the dress of Louis XIV's court arrived by horse-drawn carriage through the gardens. At Hampton Court, nearly a thousand guests explored King Henry VIII's palace brought back to life before Duran Duran played in a private courtyard. At Kensington Palace, every room became its own royal dining room.
In Shanghai he told the story of the city past, present and future under an eighty-foot dome, with rickshaws carrying food between the tables. “True sophistication in throwing events,” he has written, “is always understanding your guests.”
New York gets the same treatment. He has turned World Trade into the Carnival of Rio, with Lionel Richie and Martin Short on stage, and filled the original Stock Exchange building with Cirque du Soleil, Jackie Mason and a Cipriani dinner.
The Park
That Stock Exchange night carried the idea behind all of his work. “One of the greatest challenges in entertaining,” he wrote, “is creating a room where everybody feels like they are VIP.” So every guest had a private booth with a clear view of the stage.
The harder question followed. What if everybody could have that night, not only the people who could afford Tom Noel? The answer came on a walk in Central Park: start with the most beautiful spaces that are open to everyone, add a design and a plan that can scale, and offer it online.
Planning a wedding still means a dozen vendors, a dozen contracts and a planner to hold it together. Happenings is his answer: one system for the location, the services and the management, from the first idea to the last guest. Its proving ground is ParkWed: weddings in some of America's great city parks, the ceremony, the reception and everything between handled by one team.
Whether an event is for two people or twenty thousand, in a park or a palace, his view has not changed. “Memories,” he says, “are our true gold.”
