Si was pleased with his magazines’ sway in the realms of fashion, food, entertainment, literature, and travel. Condé Nast had a foothold in nearly every sphere and phase of human life, telling readers how to be a young adult (Mademoiselle), attract a spouse (Glamour), and marry them (Brides); how to cook (Gourmet), groom (GQ), primp (Allure), and vacation (Condé Nast Traveler); what clothes to wear (Vogue), what culture to consume (Vanity Fair), and what ideas to take seriously (The New Yorker). But there was one element of aspiration that he still wanted to conquer—how to live—and that desire led to one of his last significant acquisitions: Architectural Digest.
Since 1911, Condé Nast had published House & Garden, a magazine about decoration, furniture, and residential design. Condé Montrose Nast had spotted a market of newly affluent women who wanted guidance on how to express their status in the home, a service that he was happy to sell to them. The magazine’s archives trace the evolving grammar of the American upper- and upper-middle-class lifestyle. Servants, silent and liveried, show up in early issues and gradually disappear, supplanted by the ideal of the domestic hostess, cheery master of her kitchen. With mid-century highways came features on carports and beach bungalows, novel accoutrements for a middle class newly empowered to escape the city. By the 1960s, the look is pure WASP splendor: “Take-Along Shelters,” a 1964 spread on summer activities, features a green-and-white canopy perched atop a station wagon as navy-blazered spectators tailgate at a polo match. Each month, House & Garden exported the aesthetic standards of the Eastern establishment: cashmere sweaters were patched and threadbare, wainscoting scratched and patinaed; nothing had too much flash or glitz. In the so-called “shelter” category of magazines, House & Garden stood out as the arbiter of sensible domestic style.
Then, in 1970, a woman named Paige Rense walked into the offices of a second-tier publication in Los Angeles to apply for a job.
The Architectural Digest (the The later disappeared) got started in 1920 as a quarterly trade publication for the builders and architects fueling Southern California’s real estate boom. In the haute design world, it was an afterthought, underfunded and unloved. House & Garden ran photos by Irving Penn and Edward Steichen, and treated interiors the way Vogue treated fashion, employing squadrons of stylists to curate a just-so aesthetic of burnished old-world charm; one editor in chief paid for an entire reshoot to replace a wilting amaryllis with narcissus. The Digest didn’t print covers in color until 1964, and its writers had to beg the boss for money to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
In the late 1960s, the Digest’s owner and publisher, Cleon “Bud” Knapp, hatched a plan to improve his magazine’s reputation by appealing to a more affluent readership. Paige, a diminutive forty-one-year-old blonde in oversized eyeglasses, had little knowledge of architecture or design; her peripatetic writing career included a stint at a publication called Water World, for which she interviewed skin divers. If she possessed any visual sense, it came from the LA-area thrift shops where she hunted for recycled dresses. When Knapp asked Paige how she might make his magazine better, she thought to herself, “I couldn’t make it any worse.” At the time, Paige had her hopes set on a job at Women’s Wear Daily, but she lost out to a journalist with experience at Delicatessen News, a restaurant trade paper. So she became an associate editor at Architectural Digest instead. The job would eventually make her a pillar of Condé Nast, a global tastemaker and perhaps the single most powerful person in the world of interior design. Her whims would influence the living spaces of millions of Americans who aspired to emulate the rich.
It was an unlikely destiny.
She was born, in 1929, in an Iowa farm town, to a woman who gave her up for adoption when she was about a year old. No one remembered the baby’s name, so her adoptive parents called her Patricia. Her adoptive father, a school custodian, was abusive, and after the family moved to Los Angeles, she left home at fifteen to escape him. Like Sam Newhouse and Anna Wintour, she never finished high school. Patricia restyled herself as Paige, and worked a few low-level jobs; by her late thirties, her biggest success was publishing a short story in Cosmopolitan, about an ambitious single girl in New York whose roommate dated wealthy men. “Sherry believed in just two things,” Paige wrote of her protagonist. “Never sleep with a man who isn’t rich, and don’t tell the truth when a lie will work better.” Wealth intrigued Paige, as did independence. She kept a collection of autographs of strong women, like Dorothy Parker, who had managed to succeed on their own terms in a man’s world.
Six months after starting at Architectural Digest, she seized her chance. On April 9, 1971, the magazine’s editor in chief, James Bradley Little, was murdered outside a club in Los Angeles. Little was in the parking lot with his partner when a pair of men clambered into the back seat of his car, robbed them, and shot Little in the back of the head. The assailants were never caught. Paige persuaded Bud Knapp to put her in charge. She studied European shelter magazines and hired fixers in London and Paris to arrange access to the homes of celebrities like Coco Chanel. The odds were against her: Condé editors still referred to AD as “Architectural Disgust,” a tawdry product made by tacky Angelenos. Paige was desperate for an edge.
She found it by flouting the long-established ethics of shelter media. Paige told decorators that she was willing to publish their own photographs of their designs—effectively ceding editorial control in exchange for access, and saving AD a considerable amount of money on original photography. She spun this tactic as a virtue—that unlike the snobs at House & Garden, she would merely “report” objectively on how rich people lived. The strategy worked: Angelo Donghia and Tony Duquette, two of the era’s most influential interior designers, gave Paige exclusive photos of their latest designs. House & Garden typically published snippets of a house—a kitchen here, a mudroom there—to maintain aesthetic standards and, its editors reasoned, to provide better practical tips to middle-class readers. Paige went for lengthy, almost voyeuristic photo spreads, allowing readers to gawk at every detail of each room. Today, we call this “real estate porn.” In the 1990s, one designer dismissed it as a print version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: “It’s all, ‘Look at me! Aren’t I expensive?’ ” Another designer described Paige’s taste as “very California. Need I say more?”
Paige didn’t mind being mocked as vulgar when her sales were this good: between 1971 and 1989, circulation at Architectural Digest climbed from 50,000 to 625,000, and annual ad revenue grew from less than $1 million to an astonishing $46 million. The exclusives rolled in, with issues devoted to the lavish homes of Marlon Brando and Madonna, Truman Capote and Liza Minnelli, Woody Allen and Cher. Readers loved it. Paige negotiated the first pictures of Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s redesign of their private living quarters in the White House, beating House & Garden for the exclusive.
Si Newhouse was also watching, with growing concern. It was increasingly evident that Condé’s House & Garden was falling out of touch. Architectural Digest was flashy and acquisitive, a perfect complement to the Dynasty aesthetic of the 1980s. It also featured on-trend designers like Michael Graves, whose creations were defining the look of the yuppie age. Even Alex Liberman, who privately considered AD to be hideous, was forced to admit that the magazine “has the hideousness that will attract.” Paige, it seemed, had out-Condé’d Condé. “House & Garden got the people who had the palazzo in the family for five hundred years,” said Joan Kron, a journalist who chronicled the design magazine wars. “At Architectural Digest, it was new money, it was big money. Paige was like Barbara Walters: she wanted to get the stars.”
In the early 1980s, Si and Alex ordered a redesign of House & Garden in an effort to replicate Paige’s success. Out went the longtime editor Mary Jane Pool, a Diana Vreeland protégée and thirty-five-year Condé veteran; in came thicker paper stock and a new focus on ultra-high-end homes, ideally occupied by a celebrity. Paige fought back: she sent word to designers that if they shared their work with House & Garden, they would be banned from AD—for life. “It was never discussed, but I instinctively knew that I was to show my work exclusively in Architectural Digest, something like being under contract with a major Hollywood film studio,” one interior designer recalled. Paige once paid $20,000 to a competing magazine, Interiors, to kill their piece on a new boutique hotel in Washington, DC, that Paige wanted to feature in AD. The Digest also borrowed a Condé high/low trick by hiring literary talent like John Updike and Arthur Miller to write about topics like bathroom design; years before Graydon Carter’s VF Hollywood Issue, it dedicated an issue to movie star homes. The introduction of the AD100, a list of prestigious decorators, cemented Paige’s arbiter status.
In the summer of 1987, Si decided House & Garden had not done enough to compete with AD’s garish fantasia. Its editor, Louis Oliver Gropp, was on vacation in Newport Beach, California, where he used a pay phone once a day to check his messages. One afternoon, he received word that Si wanted to talk. “Lou, have you been reading Women’s Wear Daily while you’ve been on vacation?” Si said. “There have been a lot of stories that Anna Wintour is going to become the editor of House & Garden.”
Gropp froze. “Is that true?” he asked.
“Yes,” Si replied.
One month later, Gropp found himself presiding over a lavish design awards ceremony at the Plaza Hotel, sponsored by Condé Nast, that doubled as his own memorial service. Word was out that Anna was in, and the decorators and architects in the audience were already flocking to the chic Englishwoman who was newly in their midst. Because Si, at that point, was still reluctant to fire Grace Mirabella, he had decided on House & Garden to provide Anna a useful test of her ability to revamp a title. Anna renamed the magazine HG—an echo of Architectural Digest’s nickname of AD—and upped the celebrity quotient, running lavish spreads of homes owned by Bette Midler, David Hockney, Karl Lagerfeld, and Michael Chow. Sheila Metzner photographed the succulents in David Lynch’s garden. Anna also emphasized fashion: an article about seating featured models in high heels balancing on designer chairs. Anna brought energy—even her cover lines ended in exclamation points (“Simply Chintz!”)—but the old-guard design world balked at this blending of decor and fashion. “Apparently I am now working for ‘House & Closet,’ ” quipped John Richardson. Other nicknames included “House & Garment” and “Vanity Chair.” One whimsical photo spread, featuring celebrity hairdressers in a garden cutting topiaries, was met with particular disdain. Readers were so puzzled that Condé Nast set up a 1-800 phone line to field subscriber complaints and cancellations. “I was shocked to receive so much hate mail my first week,” Anna recalled.
The Wintour era at HG lasted barely ten months. In June 1988, Si Newhouse announced Anna’s departure for Vogue. Her replacement, Nancy Novogrod, remembered Si coming to her office to gush over the latest pages from AD: “Look how dramatic this is. Look at how wonderful.” Novogrod lasted for five years; like Gropp before her, she learned of her ouster by telephone, while hosting a dinner with advertisers at North Carolina’s High Point furniture market in April 1993. It turned out she wasn’t just losing her job—Condé Nast was closing House & Garden entirely. Secretly, Si had been courting Paige through a mutual friend, the decorator Mario Buatta. At a meeting at the Hotel Bel-Air, Si told Paige that he would purchase AD on one condition: that she come with it. If he couldn’t beat AD, he would buy it. In 1993, the Newhouses paid $175 million for AD and its sister publication, Bon Appétit, a significant premium over the magazines’ annual revenues. After ninety-two years, House & Garden was dead.
Paige now took her place among Condé’s most powerful editors. Designers showered her with gifts. “Decorators would say to me that they would take Paige to dinner, and look in Cartier’s window, and she would admire a pair of earrings, and they would send it to her the next day,” Kron told me. “And she didn’t send it back.” Paige was not shy about the quid pro quo arrangement with many of the brands she showcased. “Let’s say there are two carpet manufacturers,” she said at a 1997 industry luncheon. “One supports us with advertising. They don’t ask for anything, they just give us their money. The other doesn’t give us their money. Why would I give credit for the one that doesn’t support us with their advertising? Why should I slap the other one in the face?”
Paige published spreads on Gore Vidal’s home in Ravello, Estée Lauder’s Palm Beach manor, and Michael Bloomberg’s restoration of Gracie Mansion in New York. Just as Vogue gradually replaced models with celebrities, the cover of AD increasingly became a showcase for movie stars: an issue featuring Jennifer Aniston was one of its biggest-selling ever.
In 1995, Si announced a revival of House & Garden, citing a comeback in the American housing market. Paige was furious. “I killed it once,” she declared. “I’ll kill it again.” The new House & Garden editor, Dominique Browning, soon discovered that sharing a corporate owner with Paige would do her no favors. When Mario Buatta bumped into Browning at a gala, the designer blanched. “I can’t be seen talking to you,” he whispered. “Paige is here.” David Carey, the new House & Garden publisher, learned that Paige was telling decorators that if they cooperated with Browning, AD would never feature their houses again. Carey was flabbergasted: Why would Si allow one magazine to so brutally undercut the other? Carey brought the matter to Si and suggested there could be benefits to collaboration, but the boss was unmoved.
“If it’s not her, it’s going to be someone else,” Si told Carey, dismissing his concerns about Paige. “Figure it out.”
This exchange captured one of Si’s key precepts: competition was always good. He liked watching his editors joust over the same celebrity exclusives and the same luxury advertisers, figuring that intramural rivalries would force every magazine to raise its game. Si didn’t mind when Anna Wintour sent a memo to the Allure staff, with a list of photographers who, Anna maintained, were exclusive to Vogue and therefore could never appear in Allure’s pages. Graydon Carter used to tell his staff never to discuss magazine business in the company elevator, “because the competition is going up and down with you.” He had fond memories of how one Vanity Fair publisher, Mitchell Fox, found subtle ways to undercut the in-house competitors at Vogue.
“He’d be on a sales call, and a woman would say, ‘Well, you know, I’m putting a lot of my money in Vogue,’ ” Graydon recalled. “And Mitch says, ‘Don’t get me wrong. Our receptionist, she loves Vogue! When she gets on the subway to go home to Queens, she just reads that thing cover to cover.’ ”
Paige eventually made good on her vow of corporate fratricide. In December 2007, Condé closed House & Garden again. Browning walked into work on a Monday morning and was told to clear out her things by Friday night. Weeks later, at an Upper East Side dinner for the AD100 attended by the grandees of the design world, Paige luxuriated in her victory. The death of House & Garden, she crowed, was “richly deserved.”
Paige retired in 2010, when she was eighty-one, but her magazine’s uncritical worship of wealth and real estate extravagance lives on in the cultural fabric. The many online purveyors of lavish Instagram and TikTok house tours owe AD a debt for pioneering this shameless genre of voyeuristic fix, and websites like Zillow allow users to gaze into elaborate properties they will never buy. As income inequality has worsened, and home ownership itself became a more distant goal for millennials and Gen Z, the complicated appeal of real estate porn—its blend of pleasure, envy, and enchantment—has only grown.