Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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S uperlatives PEOPLE, CULTURE, TASTE, STYLE VIEW FROM THE TOP Keeping It Fancy TIM QUINN MAKES THE WORLD MORE BEAUTIFUL AS AN AMBASSADOR FOR GIORGIO ARMANI COSMETICS—AND AS AN ARDENT SUPPORTER OF MGH CANCER CENTER. BY REBECCA KNIGHT G rowing up in Torrington, Connecticut, Tim Quinn's childhood was mostly typical rough-and-tumble stuff. Quinn, who is the fourth child of seven in a raucous Irish Catholic family, spent his afternoons building forts in the woods with schoolmates, racing around the neighborhood with his younger sister Mary Ellen, and dragging his baby brother, Michael, around town in a wagon. But his favorite memories are of watching his mother, Christine, get ready for an evening out with his father. His mother was a homemaker who did a bit of interior decorating on the side, but when she had a date with Quinn's father, Andrew, a teacher, she would become as radiant as a movie star. She would sit at her glass-top vanity brushing her auburn hair, powdering her face, and lining her lips. She would spritz herself with Rive Gauche perfume and put on her swankiest jewelry. Quinn was rapt. "I always loved the idea of transformation," he says. Today, transformation is his life's work. As the director of creative artistry at Giorgio Armani cosmetics—a top-10-selling prestige makeup line and a division of L'Oréal USA—Quinn travels the world to fashion shows and Hollywood red carpets as an ambassador for the luxury makeup brand. "I admire Mr. Armani's approach," says Quinn, who is in his mid-40s. "He's not about artifice; he's not about the bells and whistles. One of my favorite sayings by Mr. Armani is: 'Elegance isn't being noticed; it's being remembered.' That strikes a chord with me." Quinn is tall, trim, and blond; he has twinkly green eyes and sun-kissed skin. His fashion sense is understated chic: He wears a black button-down shirt, white skinny jeans, and cool, Clark Kent – style eyeglasses. He is warm and animated, and he peppers his converOPPOSITE: Tim sation with saucy asides. As a makeup artist, Quinn stops in Quinn is known for his clean, tailored sensibility at the Julie Michaud Prettyology studio punctuated with unexpected pops of color. "I'm on Newbury Street in big on editing," he says. "It's always easier to wear between his world travels. the same thing over and over, but I help people see they could try something different." Quinn's life is just as jet-set and glamorous as you might imagine. His clients range from A-list celebrities, such as Kerry Washington and Amber Heard, to serious-minded beautiful people, such as Jill Biden and Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News correspondent and wife of Alan Greenspan. He travels 40 weeks out of the year, mainly to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. When he's not on the road, Quinn splits his time between Boca Raton, Florida, and Dorchester, Massachusetts, where he lives with his partner, Isaac Mann, a hairstylist in Newton. He met Mann in Provincetown on a blind date in the late '90s. It was kismet: "He thought I was famous, and I thought he was rich," he says cheekily. While Boston is not his yearround home—Quinn does not enjoy the lingering, frosty New England winters—the city holds a singular place in his heart. In the spring of 2007, Quinn began having sciatic twinges in his left —TIM QUINN leg. That July he collapsed in his hotel room in Paris during fashion week. He flew back to the United States and saw a series of doctors in Philadelphia and Washington, DC; none could figure out what was wrong with him. Quinn grew sicker and sicker. "Finally, Isaac said: 'You need to come to Boston,'" Quinn recalls. After a biopsy at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in his pelvis. The prognosis was good so long as he started an immediate chemotherapy regimen, which required three rounds of five-day-long hospital stays over a nine-week period. continued on page 60 "One of my favorite sayings by Mr. Armani is: 'Elegance isn't being noticed; it's being remembered.' That strikes a chord with me." BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 058-060_BC_P_VFT_Fall13.indd 59 59 8/2/13 5:38 PM