bill willis may be far less celebrated than any of his clients but his legacy remains. yves saint laurent’s second den in marrakech was collaborated on by willis and jacques grange. yves is known to have mentioned on bill’s work; ‘everything at dar es saada is laid out with an order in which I can safely deposit my disorder.’ friend of the gettys, agnellis and rotschilds, he assisted in decorating their palaces and homes in morocco with his acute knowledge of orientalist decoration. in fact his superior knowledge of keyhole arches and eye-bending pattern, spurred on my the romantic sentiments of the french writer pierre loti, made him the master of the aesthetic language of marrakech. entirely self-made, orphaned in his teens;’told on returning from a wild, illicit night out, that his mother had slipped down a cliff” and perished, he succeeded in monopolizing the morrocan tradition. american decorator stephen sills commented; ‘He was a rarefied bird — very charming, grand, very clever. And kind of mean.’ bill had since exchanged his good-looks for a prematurely-ravaged-hippie-eyeliner-look; ‘his energies and his appetites were prodigious, his hours unusual’, says christopher gibbs, the british antiques dealer.