Entertaining with Hutton Wilkinson.
It's no secret that I obsessively follow the goings ons of Hutton Wilkinson. I saw him speak at an ASID event in Houston a few years ago and simply haven't gotten enough since. Hutton is the longtime business partner of Tony Duquettes and continues to keep Duquettes style and designs alive. He oozes taste and fun and accessibility and the love of all things fabulous and over the top.
Recently Veranda featured Hutton at Duquette's former residence, Dawnridge in Beverly Hills, showing us how to add some style and zhush to our dinner parties. My attraction to Hutton is primarily based on him having such a strong personal style. He was open and friendly, willing to share any personal story, advice etc without an ounce of pretension. I mean check out his style and that table, nevermind the setting. I'm swooning.
“Tony had such a highly personal and individual style, and people are starving for individuality these days.”
Hutton purchased Dawnridge to keep it from meeting the wrecking ball. Tony Duquette handmade the garden pagodas and 28 foot Phoenix sculpture.
"Duquette was well known for his ability to put on a dazzling show with nontraditional materials salvaged from unlikely sources, such as the jade- colored Chinese fretwork screen made out of plastic building materials. He famously mixed high and low, the costly and the found, the rare and the common."
“Tony was a visionary, nothing was too precious to him. He always said, ‘Beauty, not luxury, is what I value.’”
"In the Wilkinson/Duquette universe, there are certain rules for entertaining. Foremost, no white napkins allowed. Using a vast collection of china, flatware and figurines inherited from the Duquettes, Wilkinson adds his own newer pieces to create fantastically colored landscapes for the table. Coral red mixes happily with jade green, cerulean blue and, of course, gold—lots and lots of gold."
“I live on old movies, they teach us how to sit and act at the table, and they do so in those beautifully decorated rooms! People don’t entertain like they used to, but everyone should remember that it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just order wonderful takeout, dress up a little and set a marvelous table, and no one will know the difference.”
Read the full article from Veranda here.
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