Though he shot to fame in 2018 when he became one of Queer Eye’s beloved fab five hosts, Tan France had spent the last two decades curating a career as a prominent womenswear designer, stylist, memoirist, and TV personality. With his visual background, it naturally followed that France, a longtime resident of Salt Lake City, would be heavily involved in the design of his family’s new home.
“I chose to move here because I thought it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life,” says France, who is the son of Pakistani immigrants and was raised in South Yorkshire, England. “The people are the kindest I’ve ever experienced.”
Alongside his husband, Rob, an illustrator and painter, the Next In Fashion host spent three years erecting what would become a red-brick Tudor-style home featuring a blend of South Asian, English, and American interior touches. (You can watch the project come to life in AD’s Home at Last video series.) “I treated this house like a collection,” France says. “If you’ve ever been to a runway show, it should tell a story. I wanted the top of the house to be like the opening look of a runway, and I wanted the final look to be shocking as the showstopper.”
To achieve this level of detail would require painstaking research for any designer. Fortunately, Tom and Cara Fox, the husband-wife team behind the Fox Group, specialize in bringing ambitious visions to life. “We’ve been inspired by our travels, especially to Europe,” Cara says. “I think that’s why it was such a good fit with Tan’s home, because he wanted it to feel like it was from the 1800s in England but with modern luxury and convenience.”
In order to produce the most accurate framework, the Fox Group’s lighting team went to England to study the luxury department store Liberty London, which famously uses beams with timber from two historic Royal Navy ships. “When we did the interior and exterior Tudor beams, and the windows, we made sure those would be perfectly authentic in shape, size, and texture,” Cara says.
