Thomas O'Brien

Thomas O'Brien is the founder and proprietor of Aero Studios, one of the country's most influential young design firms.

Based in New York City's downtown SoHo arts neighborhood, O'Brien divides his design practice between three areas: creating interiors for select clients - both residential and commercial; running his own store, Aero; and designing a wide range of products for the home, including a growing range of national product partnerships through the Thomas O'Brien(TM) label.

Since his arrival on the New York design stage, O'Brien has been widely recognized for his trademark style of "warm modernism," bringing vanguard mid-century forms and furnishings into a context of classic comfort. In both interiors and products, his firm promotes understated elegance with a pulse on tradition, deploying pairings of old and new, sophisticated and simple, to create a style that feels at once refined and familiar.

"I like practical and useful things, as well as fine and rare things," O'Brien says, explaining the juxtapositions that define his work: casual and elegant, classical and modern, masculine and feminine. Tailoring the balance between these elements yields a unique, yet distinctly authored design formula for each project he undertakes.

O'Brien creates signature interior goods that are available to both the trade and public. Program lines range from architectural elements (lighting and bathroom fixtures) to major furnishings (upholstery, case goods, mattresses, rugs, and fabric) to the everyday (bedding, bath textiles, and tabletop), covering all aspects of comfortable dwelling.

Thomas O'Brien was born in 1961 in upstate New York. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City in 1986. He lives in Manhattan and in Bellport, New York.