ALESSIA GENOVA

Tihany Design—one of New York’s most prestigious design ateliers—has announced that Partner Alessia Genova has assumed full ownership and management of Tihany Design. Ms. Genova began her career at Tihany Design’s Rome office in 2007 shortly after graduating from Politecnico di Milano, served as Senior Designer for 10 years and became Studio Director in 2017. Adam D. Tihany, Founder & Principal of Tihany Design named her the first-ever Managing Partner, in 2020 and, subsequently, Partner.

Manhattanites have long been familiar with Adam Tihany and his studio’s interior designs in some of the city’s most venerable hospitality venues. The atelier transformed the 35th floor of Mandarin Oriental New York, and Office NYC, a stunning post-Prohibition bar. It oversaw the design of eight Maccioni family projects — including Le Cirque 2000, Osteria del Circo and the contemporary Italian restaurant, Sirio—and Per Se with Chef Thomas Keller. With Chef Daniel Boulud, the studio collaborated on three restaurants, including the current signature interior of his flagship restaurant, Daniel, for which food enthusiast Alessia Genova was very much a part. She claims: “Design is like cooking. You can follow a recipe, but it’s the extra ingredients — the passion, dedication, and a little madness — that bring the dream to life.”

What New Yorkers may not know is that since 2012, Tihany Design has built a long-term partnership with The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, one of the country’s most notable oceanfront resorts. Together, they have been transforming its public areas and private accommodations, venue by venue, space by space.

Ms. Genova oversaw their most recent project at Flagler Club, the exclusive 21-room boutique “hotel-within-a-hotel,” on its top two floors. As Founder Adam D. Tihany noted: “Our collaboration is as energized as ever, with Alessia leading the renovation of the ultra-chic Flagler Club.” Ms. Genova’s luxury hospitality   lifestyle projects showcase sensational custom interiors for prestige hotels/resorts, restaurants, and private clubs, as well as ultra-luxury estates and cruise ships, where she pilots the “story” for each project with skill and executes it with style.

At Flagler Club, the visionary professional had direct oversight of its redesign. The project reconfigured the original 25 rooms to 21 accommodations, including more two-bedroom, two-bath suites. Its elegant contemporary décor showcases custom-made carpets, warm wood pieces, and tropical artwork in the club lounge, where small groups of cream to pastel solid-colored settees and side chairs, which frame oval-shaped marble coffee tables, and mid-century round pedestal tables, are set atop a brown and white geometric patterned carpet. 

Outdoors, the 6th floor rooftop terrace overlooks the hotel’s legendary fountain and long, palm tree-lined entry drive. Here, the sleek and calming décor combines white upholstered furnishings accented by turquoise and green striped, solid coral and floral-patterned pillows, that repeat the interior color palette.

Custom-designed furnishings are the hallmark of the bedrooms, with their bold sculptural carpets, upholstered headboards, make-up tables, chaise lounges and leather, foot-of-bed trunks, that open for storage. Leather appears in the walk-in closet as straps on the luggage rack and on a chest of drawers. Even the curved double vanity in the marble floored bathroom is unique. Up to the minute technology in the bedroom includes remote controlled blackout shades.

The private retreat is named for Henry Morrison Flagler, a partner with John D. Rockefeller in the original Standard Oil Company (Exxon), who founded the resort hotel, circa 1896. The magnate turned his vision towards Florida in the 1880s and transformed South Florida into a vacation destination by developing the Florida East Coast Railroad and hotels from Saint Augustine south to Palm Beach, where The Breakers immediately became—and continues to be—a posh, 140-acre winter retreat for the “who’s who” of society. In the mid-1920s, a second fire destroyed the wooden beachfront hotel and Flagler’s brother-in-law, William R. Kenan, Jr., president of the Florida East Coast Hotel Company and the Florida East Coast Railway Company, built the grand, Italian Renaissance-inspired palace that still entices guests. Flagler heirs continue to own the resort and invest about $30 million annually to preserve its historic integrity and continually update the AAA Five Diamond property listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

During the decade since The Breakers/Tihany Design partnership began, they also launched HMF, a chic restaurant/lounge that pays tribute to the classic Palm Beach cocktail culture of the 50s and 60s off the central lobby, with its high ceilings and custom-designed carpet; reimagined Flagler Steakhouse, a cozy American chophouse; did the makeover of the Seafood Bar, with its nautical décor facing the ocean and grand aquariums; and crafted interiors for Henry’s Palm Beach, in town.

The atelier also refreshed resort guestrooms, the lobby, the Ponce de Leon Ballroom and Gulfstream Meeting Rooms, re-designed Main Street by The Breakers, a contemporary boutique and café and the resort’s 25 poolside bungalows at The Breakers’ Beach Club.