Interior Design's 24th Hall of Fame Awards & Gala will take place Wednesday, December 3, 2008.

Interior Design's 23rd Hall of Fame Awards & Gala took place Wednesday, November 28, 2007.

The crème de la crème of the design community filled the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria to its rafters on November 28, 2007 as Interior Design hosted its 23rd annual Hall of Fame gala.

The event, always an undisputed highlight of New York’s fall social season, drew more than 1,500 gowned and tuxedoed attendees to watch five new inductees ascend the stage: Todd DeGarmo of Studios Architecture, Carl D'Aquino and Francine Monaco of D'Aquino Monaco, Ingo Maurer of Ingo Maurer LLC, and Murray Moss of Moss.

But this year’s gala held particular significance, as it coincided with Interior Design’s 75th anniversary celebration. So, before kicking off the ceremony, Interior Design editor in chief Cindy Allen treated the guests to a Left Bank Communications pictorial montage of design icons who were featured in Interior Design’s Fall Market Tabloid: Iris Barrel Apfel, cofounder of Old World Weavers; Jeannie Bochette, marketing manager at Steelcase; Harry Hinson, founder of Hinson & Company; Jack Lenor Larsen, founder of Eponymous Company; Neville Lewis, founder of Neville Lewis Associates; Hilda Longinotti, architectural and design liaison for Herman Miller; Ruth Lynford, president of Lynford Limited; Robert Siegel, principal at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects; and Hazel Siegel, founder, Atelier Hazel Siegel.

As the dessert plates were cleared, Allen took to the podium once again to officially welcome the newest members of the Interior Design elite. In place of the long-winded tributes typical of award programs, the inductees were introduced by videos that were alternately humorous and moving, but always highly personal.

Todd DeGarmo’s expose charted his path from childhood in Proctorville, Ohio to CEO of Studios Architecture, the Washington, DC-based firm with offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Paris. With an ever so slight Southern drawl, DeGarmo calls himself a “classic leader in that I’m fearless.”

Carl D’Acquino and Francine Monaco took to the stage together to join the Hall of Fame as a result of their partnership in New York-based D’Aquino Monaco. “We don’t really make a distinction between residential work and commercial work,” says D’Aquino. “We’re always looking for what’s personal about any project.

Ingo Maurer’s position as a design icon has been obvious for decades, but the lighting designer finally found his status authenticated in the Grand Ballroom. From early works such as 1966’s Bulb, to his latter-day dalliances with LEDs, Maurer was honored not so much for producing lighting, but for provoking magic.

Murray Moss is the first retailer to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but of course, he’s much more than a shopkeeper: style arbiter, design patron, provocateur. His Moss store in New York, and now Los Angeles, continues to inspire not only the design community, but the public at large.

Prior to the induction ceremony, the five honorees rubbed shoulders in the hotel’s Salons and posed for a photo opportunity with past Hall of Fame members at a special VIP reception. Following the program, the overflow crowd lingered after midnight for dancing and libations at the after party.

Bentley Prince Street provided the special 75^th Anniversary gift bag, colorfully illustrated with selected Interior Design covers spanning 1932 to the present, while 14 manufacturers served as Hall of Fame sponsors: Artistic Tile, Bernhardt Design, Ceramic Tiles of Italy, Constantine, Coverings, Crossville, Dornbracht, Edelman, Elkay, Interiors from Spain, Kohler Interiors, Mannington Commercial, Phylrich, Solutia Ultron, and Tandus.

Proceeds from the event benefited The Council for Interior Design Accreditation and InformeDesign, a research and communications tool for designers created by the University of Minnesota.