Hilton McConnico

Joseph Hilton McConnico was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1943. As a teenager he opened a small fashion atelier, already experimenting with bold silhouettes and fearless colour. A fashion competition introduced him to Paris, and the city soon became his permanent base.

In Paris he worked with a number of fashion houses and gradually shifted from clothing to drawing, set design and scenography. This move opened the way to a multidisciplinary practice that blurred the boundaries between fashion, film and interior architecture.

From the 1970s onward he designed sets and costumes for films and commercials. His work on feature productions earned critical recognition, including a major French cinema award for production design in the 1980s.

Beyond cinema, McConnico created interiors, glass objects, lighting, carpets and textiles. He collaborated with manufacturers and luxury brands, translating his distinctive visual language into objects and spaces around the world.

His drawings and paintings often functioned as both autonomous works and storyboards for future environments. Many of these images explore imaginary cities, theatrical rooms and characters suspended somewhere between dream and stage.

McConnico continued to work for decades, regularly exhibiting and taking on new commissions. He passed away in 2018, leaving behind a body of work that remains difficult to categorise but immediately recognisable.