Nina Campbell

London-based interior designer Nina Campbell has decorated some of the most luxuriant hotels, residences, and clubs across the world. She has transformed homes for the rich and famous, including Rod Stewart and the Duke and Duchess of York. She’s the author of six successful books on design. And to top it off, she’s a mother and a grandmother.

Campbell’s design presence spans several continents. Notable projects include her design of London’s Savoy Hotel lobby, the Hotel Parc Victor Hugo in Paris, the Groucho Club in London, and the Campbell Apartment Bar at Grand Central Station, New York.

Campbell says she found her passion for design when she was very young; she remembers spending hours rearranging furniture with her mother at their home. “Halfway through,” she says, “we’d get exhausted and go to bed, leaving sofas and chairs halfway up the staircase.”

She found success in the field not long thereafter. At the age of nineteen, she was an assistant at London’s Sybil Colefax & John Fowler Company, known for its furnishing fabrics and wallpaper. She soon set up her own business, where one of her first commissions was to decorate Cullen House, a castle in Banffshire, Scotland.

Campbell opened her own showroom and design studio in 1984. She soon launched the first of what was to become her annual fabric, wallpaper and trimming collections, internationally distributed by Osborne & Little.

Campbell’s list of awards includes the Royal Oak Timeless Design Award of 2003 and Residential Designer of the Year of 2010 from IDFX Magazine. She received a US Fashion Award for “the woman who has most influenced style internationally,” and the Brit Week Design Icon Award for her significant contributions to British design. She recently was awarded the Pratt Institute’s Legends Award, celebrating distinguished individuals and corporations in the world of art and design.

Despite her worldwide influence, Campbell keeps her feet on the ground when it comes to designing homes for her clients. “The most important thing is that these are properties for people, rather than for speculation or for show,” she says. Campbell works to find how they want to live, which is “the most important thing to establish.”

René Silvin

René Silvin’s life changed some 25 years after he began his successful career in the investor-owned hospital industry. Forced to retire after surviving a late-stage cancer, Silvin dedicated himself to historical research and writing.

Silvin has since published five books, including memoir about his friendship with the late Duchess of Windsor; an account of the SS Normandie, the French Line’s 1930’s flagship of Palm Beach; and a history of Palm Beach, Florida, seen through the eyes of the famous society architect Addison Mizner.

“I deliberately chose historical subjects I had been passionate about in large part so that I could develop educational and entertaining lectures on the books’ subjects,” he says. “Being invited by the Thomasville Antique Show Foundation to speak at this years’ event represents the apogee of this strategy.”

Silvin says he views his role as author and lecturer to be that of “a raconteur of intriguing and authentic stories based on major historic events. My goal and passion is to inform and entertain a sophisticated audience interested in famous people, style, and elegance on unusual subjects,” he says.

Silvin will speak at the Thomasville Antiques Show about architect Addison Mizner, who is known for having created the “Palm Beach look” and the Mediterranean Revival style.

“Mizner took the 17th and 18th century Spanish architecture he loved as a child and altered it to create stunningly beautiful, climatically appropriate mansions,” Silvin says. “His style became known as Mediterranean Revival, or ‘Medrev,’ which is copied today all over Florida.”

Silvin’s lecture will include information about Mizner’s now-famous Boca Raton Resort and Club, as well as Villa Mizner, a mansion that has become revered and is frequently studied in the field.

René Silvin is listed in Who’s Who in the World (1988) as well as Who’s Who in Finance and Industry and Who’s Who in Health Care.

Jorge Sánchez

Jorge Sánchez first discovered his love for gardening as young child growing up in Havana, Cuba, when his parents gave him a packet of radish seeds to plant.

“Not the most exotic of plants, but that was the spark,” he says. “Collecting is also in my DNA. Place both together, [and you get] the perfect blend to create a passion.”

When he and his family moved to Palm Beach, Florida, in 1959, he went to school with the intention of later working for his family’s sugar cane business. Fate would have a slightly different plan.

Sánchez turned his passion for finding and cultivating interesting plants into his profession. Today, he is co-founder, principal and president of SMI, a landscape architectural design firm that specializes in botanical garden and park design; landscape preservation and restoration; and estate, residential, civic, and commercial master planning.

Since 1982, Sánchez and his team have designed landscapes linking neighborhoods, schools, museums, parks, and medical institutions. They have renovated entire avenues, with new paving, living walls, fountain plazas, and plantings. They have created waterfront parks linked by botanical gardens, common areas, green markets, floating docks, and pedestrian pathways.

Sánchez’ work may be grand in scale, but the intention behind the work is very simple — to serve the needs of the people who enjoy it. “Make your garden your refuge, your private world. Let it cleanse your mind,” he advises.

Located in the heart of downtown Palm Beach, SMI serves clients throughout the United States and the Bahamas. The firm has won multiple awards in the field, including the 2014 Addison Mizner Medal for Excellence in the category of Gardens and Landscape Architecture; the 2013 Lesly S. Smith Landscape Award; the 2012 Palm Beach Chamber Award for Best Restoration and Renovation; and the 2010 Arthur Ross Award for Landscape Architecture.

Sánchez’s work has been publicized in multiple magazines, including Southern Living, Garden Design, Veranda, and Luxe.

Hannah Ling

Hannah Ling discovered her love for nature in the French countryside, where she spent many of her childhood years. She would later turn that passion into her life’s work as founder and creative director of Gardenia Organic, the first florist in New York City to offer its customers responsibly sourced flowers.

Upon opening her business in late 2007, Ling’s mission was to lead the way for a less wasteful floral industry; her concept was that being sustainable does not mean compromising on quality, design, or price.

“The use of pesticides and fertilizers in flower production is not only adding harmful toxins and chemicals to our food and water chains, thereby affecting our health, [but] it also has a damaging impact on the environment,” Ling says. “By sourcing and supporting sustainable growers in developing countries — where most of our retail flowers are grown — we are helping them to adopt healthier growing methods and safer working conditions.”

Gardenia Organic soon became the first New York florist to be become certified by VeriFlora and the first to be awarded Green America’s “Business Seal of Approval.”  

Today, Ling focuses on designing bouquets for the purpose of healing. “Almost every culture references the symbolic meaning of flowers, and medical practitioners have now long acknowledged their therapeutic properties,” Ling says. “All elements of the flower contain a value that can be applied in a variety of formulations for healing purposes.”

In addition, Ling says she uses her own psychic abilities to channel healing, “program[ming] the bouquets with the most appropriate healing energy needed for the recipient. Our goal is to support and promote the healthy balance of mind, body, and spirit.”

Gardenia Organic is the top-rated florist in New York City on Yelp and has been featured by a number of major media outlets, including Elle, Vogue, Gotham Magazine, New York Magazine, NBC’s Today show, Brides UK and the New York Times.