Elizabeth (“Beegle”) and Tony Duquette.

Great design is all about grand illusion. No one knew this better than Tony Duquette, the self-styled do-it-yourself di Medici whose razzle-dazzle décor, costumes, jewelry and interiors took center stage in Hollywood's heyday.

His larger-than-life, over-the-top creations, dubbed Duquettery, won starring roles in films and in the homes and lives of the stars, and, now, his staged life is charmingly chronicled in Tony Duquette (Abrams, $75) by House & Garden design director Wendy Goodman and Duquette successor Hutton Wilkinson. “Tony Duquette was trying to enchant the world,” says interior designer Wilkinson, who was associated with the materials magician for three decades and now owns Duquette's Los Angeles-based company. “He worked with gold paper, not solid gold, and he always said, ‘Beauty, not luxury, is what I value. I do it to see the smile on people's faces.'”

Whether they included Versailles-style mirrors crowned with lobsters, 18th-century French paneling studded with pieces of sea coral or antique Gobelin tapestries framed with leopard-print velvet, Duquette's Hollywood Regency-style fantasies never failed to delight. “He was always 10 years ahead of his time,” Wilkinson says. “And he never stopped amazing me. He'd walk into a junk shop and buy everything or he'd choose a poison green color scheme, and he was always right.”

If Duquette's designs are original, so are the fool-the-eye materials he chose for their creation. “His pieces, whether they are made out of hubcaps or old erasers from a grade school, are humorous,” Wilkinson says, “but they are done in a very serious way.”

Although Duquette and his artist wife, Beegle, had been regaling Hollywood for decades, it wasn't until 1972 that Wilkinson joined the party. “When I was in seventh grade, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about him,” he says. “Tony Duquette was everything I dreamed of. I saved the article and then when I was 18, I was in art school and the teacher told me that Duquette was looking for volunteers to help him put on an art exhibit. I ended up working for him for five years then started my own design business. He was extremely generous. He never gave me a dollar, but he did give me jewels, invitations to parties and introductions to clients.”

Early in his career, Duquette became the protégé of interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, and through her connections he ultimately attracted the attention of Hollywood.

By the 1940s and 1950s Duquette and his Duquettery had made their mark in a number of films, including Lovely To Look At, Kismet, To Catch a Thief and in 1960, Can-Can. At the same time, he was creating costumes and sets for the San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco Opera and won a Tony for the costumes in the 1960 Broadway production of Camelot.

Soon, he was designing whimsical interiors for stars like James Coburn and Jennifer Jones, creating jewelry for the Duchess of Windsor and working with the likes of Doris Duke, J. Paul Getty and Elizabeth Arden.

His frequent fantasy parties were as legendary as his interior design work and his fun furnishings. The Duquettes' West Hollywood studio, which looked like a sultan's pleasure palace, became the setting for formal black-tie dinners and costume parties that attracted star diners like Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Fred Astaire. Footmen, dressed in 18th-century Venetian livery, waited on the guests, and original divertissements, everything from Duquette-produced square dancing to Chinese ballets, provided the entertainment.


Tony Duquette's office at Dawnridge. His desk is eighteenth-century French. The nineteenth-century mirrors are flanked by Duquette's collection of eighteenth-century apothecary boxes purchased in Verona.

“It was like dream central,” Wilkinson says. “There was all this glitter and glamour – the tablecloths were gold lamé, silver lace overlay or vinyl snakeskin or leopard, but the Duquettes always served humble Mexican food. The studio became a real destination for people.”

Wilkinson, who bought Dawnridge, Duquette's first house, has been keeping the tradition of theatrical theme parties alive since Duquette's death in 1999. “I redecorated the house so that now it is furnished only with pieces Tony made, and when I have my monthly dances and weekly dinner parties, I decorate it with Tony's props,” he says. “I carry it on in my own way, but I'll never be Tony Duquette. I'm as much Tony Duquette as Galliano is Dior, but I do my best to follow in his footsteps. I don't know whether there will ever be another Tony Duquette; he was completely original.”

As time went on, Wilkinson and Duquette collaborated on interior design projects. Wilkinson, who is redecorating the old Sophia Loren ranch in Hidden Valley, California, continues to create 18-karat custom jewelry with precious and semi-precious stones for Bergdorf Goodman under the Tony Duquette brand. “Tony never compromised on his art,” Wilkinson says. “The lesson I learned from him was to work from the gut, to be spontaneous. Tony didn't do his designs for the money – he was never rich, but he was what I call successful – he did them for the look.”


Duquette's last project was the decoration of the twelfth-century Palazzo Brandolini in Venice. Shown is the Tiepolo drawing room at the Palazzo Brandolini which is trimmed in leopard velvet.

Regardless of whether Duquette was putting his signature touch on an Irish castle or a Parisian villa, he made it entertaining. All you have to do is look at his designs – who else would ever think to jazz up formal Louis XV dining chairs by hand painting amethyst leopard spots on their cream leather upholstery? – to see that. “Working with him was the most fun in the whole world,” Wilkinson says. “We never stopped laughing.”

The Duquette biography, Wilkinson says, has been a long labor of love. The writing was as easy as gilding an antler horn for a Duquette-designed mirror, but it took an entire decade to get a publisher interested. It is Wilkinson's hope that his ode to Duquette, who was his role model and best friend, will inspire a new generation and that it will fan the fantasy, leading Hollywood to film, once again, the Duquette magic. “His was a fascinating life,” Wilkinson says. “He was a gentleman of the old school, and he knew everyone in his time.”

In the event that there is indeed a happy Hollywood ending, Wilkinson has an entire collection of Duquette pieces waiting in the wings for their next starring role.


The stage at the Tony Duquette studio ballroom, decorated with panels of crushed abalone shell, crystal chandeliers, and a throne from the Chapultapec palace in Mexico.