Wynn Las Vegas Magazine by MODERN LUXURY

Wynn Las Vegas - 2016 - Issue 2 - Fall

Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas

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24 photography by roger davies (chairman's club); courtesy of moore & giles (thomas) top left: Roger Thomas, Executive Vice President of Design for Wynn Design & Development, sketches many initial plans on paper. above: The Wynn Chairman's Club is filled with thoughtful and ornate details, such as polished brass floral trellises inspired by an Art Deco necessaire (or cosmetics case) inspired by Van Cleef & Arpels, and are designed to reflect the fountains outside. which also debuted this year.) "In Wynn Macau, we're in a downtown area and get the cross traffic of four other hotels," Wynn explains. "If a guy doesn't like his hotel, he can walk across the street to ours. Cotai is so separate, we had to be so fetching that we became the destination—so people would know they had to come see it and experi- ence it. How do you take an enterprise like this to another level besides just saying it? You review every single detail, over and over. You think about the comfort and hap- piness of the employees, the distances they have to walk, the emotional experience of the guest moving through the space… And then you revisit them." Planning for this or any Wynn resort, Wynn describes, begins when he and Executive Vice President of Architecture at Wynn Design & Development DeRuyter Butler sit down with an idea. "We're think- ing about the most fundamental experience. If you walk through a crummy hallway to a palatial room, it takes the edge off the room's loveliness in your mind. But if you walk through a palatial hallway, it elevates the whole experience," he says. "So I took another look at corridors: In all hotels, they're five or six feet wide. We made them eight feet wide, and the feeling of just walk- ing the hallway is luxurious. We deepened the rooms. We raised the ceilings. We revisited every element of the room, inch by inch, and item by item." I recall a moment on a tour of a Garden Villa in which I marveled to a member of the WDD interior design team that even the sprinkler caps on the ceiling are the precise shade of Cotai White that belongs to Wynn Palace. "Thank you," she said. "Do you know how many times I matched those custom sprinkler caps?" Wynn is amused at the anec- dote—but not surprised. "Do you know why we can do what no one else can?" he asks. "No one has the patience, and no one has the dedication to the process. 'Art is long and life is short'—Kaf ka [quoting Hippocrates]. This is also taken to mean that the technique and craft are long and life is short. We're willing to crumple up pieces of paper that were okay but not good enough." Wynn explains that when he asks about guests' takeaway from the resort, he is not soliciting opinions on design or décor, he's looking for a feeling. "Is it contemporary? Is it palatial? Is it warm? Is it joyful? Is it very fancy? You could go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and it's beautiful, but it's from another time and you might not identify with it. You don't see yourself living in it. You might not call Buckingham Palace joyful." While Steve Wynn certainly has favorite moments and places in Wynn Palace, those are not what he and I are talking about on this day. The point he wants to stress is that the sum of all these laboriously forged elements, these carefully sourced pieces, this custom furniture, is that visceral, gut reaction— something that takes years of development to get just right. "I learned an important thing from the great advertising innovator Hal Riney. "We think about the comfort and happiness of the employees, the emotional experience of the guest... And then we revisit them."—steve wynn

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