High-Stakes Decor

California designer Roger Thomas celebrates his dazzling new monograph

Words by DIANE DORRANS SAEKS
Photography courtesy of WYNN RESORTS ARCHIVES

PHOTO: Roger Davies.

After five decades of designing ultra-luxury Wynn and Encore resorts, hotels, and casinos in Las Vegas, Macau, and Boston, California-based interior designer Roger Thomas has finally published his biography, Resort Style: Spaces of Celebration (Rizzoli, $65). On its 255 vivid pages, Thomas illustrates how he infuses his endeavors with elements of drama, mystery, romance, surprise, comfort, luxury, and entertainment.

“My projects involved deploying 27-foot-long crystal dragons, acres of chandeliers by Dale Chihuly, hundreds of hand-blown Murano wall sconces, or arrays of gold silk-swagged curtains,” he says. “Every day was pure pleasure.”

Thomas’ new monograph highlights his grandest work. Working in Las Vegas with Steve and Elaine Wynn, he unleashed his artistic imagination and unfurled a scholar’s erudition to create hotels, resorts, and casinos of astonishing style, fantasy, and elegance.

As an interior designer, Thomas always broke rules with the goal of creating a sense of lush comfort and multidimensional fantasy. In Italy he worked with old-world silk textile weavers in Como and the top chandelier makers in Venice, he consulted the best wood paneling experts in Paris, and he hired the finest carpet weavers in Ireland. His world is one of handcrafted luxury.

Taking a break from book promotion, Thomas is now spending time in his art-filled Venetian palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal, where he studies centuries of inspiring art and architecture and plans historic restoration Venetian fundraising. After his imagination is uplifted by Italian sumptuousness, he will return in summer to his modernist home on a remote hillside in Marin Country. There he oversees new designs for Los Angeles–based company Quintus, which features bespoke furniture crafted in Southern California.

San Francisco philanthropist Denise Hale has spent time in all of Thomas’ resorts, including three in Macau. She admires the pages depicting the craftsmanship, authenticity, and bravado of his interiors.

“Roger’s book records the dramatic scale of his casinos, the palatial décor of the suites, and his fearless use of color,” Hale says. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing up close the fine embroideries, the gilded dragons, the verre églomisé birds and flowers. Every room in his monograph was designed in collaboration with Elaine Wynn. The book is a tour de force.”