Making seemingly anachronistic pieces appear timely and overtly ostentatious pieces appear elegantly austere, Michael McKinnon is a designer skilled in harmonizing the incongruous.

From his salad days spent with Benedictine monks in Minnesota to his late adolescence spent studying philosophy, economy, politics and law at Sciences Po Paris, it is easy to see where McKinnon developed his knack for making sense of disparate worlds.

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, McKinnon’s designs are an exercise in intricate simplicity. He can tailor extravagance into taste without stripping it of zest and seduce sumptuous into sensible, without depriving it of luxury.  

Although he is of Scottish descent, France’s most famed design firms come to him for style advice. Last November, McKinnon decorated the Hermès table at the Créativité gala dinner event held at the French Consulate, and this coming spring, will redecorate the dining room of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s summer estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. Using the Hèrmes Estampe de Toucans dinner plates and additional arts de la table from the Hermès family of companies, McKinnon will transform the room into a coy but stately retreat, and an exemplary illustration of the elements praised by Wharton herself in The Decoration of Houses.