Skyring puts style stamp on Auckland’s top restaurants

Tom Skyring. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Tom Skyring wears only Kenzo and Versace. He drives a 1972 Jensen Interceptor and lives in a warehouse-style apartment decorated mostly in white and tan. All the art in his home is black and white.

Some might say his attention to detail and design is bordering on the obsessive. Yet it is his extremely well-honed sense of style that has created a buzz among the owners of Auckland's top restaurants.

Any eatery or bar of note that has opened in the past few years is more than likely to have the distinctive Skyring stamp, from Euro and Otto's to Pasha, Pontoon, Milano and Degree, and - most recently - the much-hyped Dine by Peter Gordon.

Like internationally renowned Gordon's fusion-style cooking, the elegant restaurant at SkyCity combines different influences. Asian, art deco, traditional and contemporary touches are mixed, then given a unifying Zen-like calm with a soothing dark brown and crisp white colour palette. The space features lots of brown leather, white marble and dark-stained oak.

"I don't find this a pretentious room even though it's got a number of elements that could be called pretentious," says Skyring, sitting in one of the restaurant's leather chairs.

"It's got a welcoming feel. I try to encapsulate people in the projects I do and you can imagine coming through the lobby after a hard day and when you hit this space, sitting back and thinking, life isn't that bad."

For Gordon, it's everything he wanted - and more.

"My brief to Tom was to create a place that wasn't too flash but not too dowdy. I wanted something that was elegant, that would age well. He's achieved that because it feels as if it's been here for a while, yet it's contemporary. The dining room is gorgeous and it works equally well in evening and day."

After 20 years as an interior designer, Skyring is enjoying being at the top of his game.

"I only do two or three jobs a year. Restaurants are what I love. I love everything about them. I love good food, I love good wine, I love socialising."

He also likes the fact that a lot of people get to see his work.

"It's very nice to be working on incredibly public spaces. A lot of designers spend a year working on a beautiful penthouse for someone but only 20 people ever see it."

The multiple award winning designer was particularly delighted when Metro magazine voted Otto's the Best Room in its Restaurant Awards and when Pasha won Best Ambience in the Restaurant Association's hospitality awards last year.

"It's nice to see the restaurants become really successful because we're only a starting point and we are only one part of what the secret is," he says.

"I've been fortunate to work with the cream of the operators in Auckland. They are driven, they know what they want, and they are decisive. I don't mind seeing wear in a restaurant but I hate seeing neglect. You know when you walk into a place and it feels grubby or unkempt. The good ones don't let it get neglected. They pay attention to detail and they will repaint a wall if it's been marked."

After starting out designing corporate interiors in New Zealand, Skyring's career took an unusual turn when he moved to London and landed a job with a company that had the King of Saudi Arabia as a client. Skyring worked on three palaces for the king, exposing him to vast quantities of high-quality materials.

"That was interesting because I was dealing with some of the rarer marbles and learning how marble is graded and what you can do and can't do with different materials. It was the kind of experience you could never get here."

After four years in London, Skyring returned home to take up a position as a director with an Australian architectural firm, which did a lot of hotel work throughout New Zealand, including the Millennium hotels in Christchurch and Queenstown.

"But I got dissatisfied with being part of a large animal," he says.

He left to set up his own business six years ago and since then the work has been flowing in, despite the fact that he has never had any business cards printed.

"It's all word of mouth but I think where I have a slight advantage over some other people is that it's me, not some large company."

There is a sense of drama and discovery in Skyring's work. Fashion fads, including the current fascination with minimalism, leave him cold. He prefers an eclectic approach.

"I'm far more contemporary than I am traditional. I'm not into the English country look. Most of the spaces I design feel comfortable for today but I think they are going to feel comfortable in 10 years' time. They have a contemporary feel to them but they are not outrageous. You can go that way but then what happens is that they almost become dated from the time you open," he says.

"I like something old mixed with something new and a mixture of materials. I love natural materials, I love leather, I love timber, I love marble. If it was good enough for the Romans it's good enough for us. If you actually let marble go and live with it for a while it will get its own patina and in fact it will look better than when it was brand new."

Skyring also dislikes design that makes too much of our Pacific-rim location.

"I'm so glad that trend from five or six years ago, the New Zealand Look has ended. I never bought into that. I found it very tacky."

Instead, he prefers to celebrate the more sophisticated local style that is emerging among New Zealand interior designers.

"I think we are becoming far more comfortable in our own shoes. We don't look overseas as much as we used to. I think we have finally realised that for a little country we are pretty good."