America — land of the free and home of self-actualization — remains unsurpassed for the license we grant to wholesale personal reinvention, a transformative process perhaps most tellingly revealed in people’s homes. Our ingrained national penchant for imagining whom you want to be and then becoming it grew to unprecedented proportions during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Those who came to cultural awareness during the heyday of the great motion picture studios have been particularly susceptible to the spell cast by the silver screen, a magical aura that suffused not only manners and mores, but also dress and design. This demographic includes Ralph Lauren (b. 1939), Barbra Streisand (b. 1942), and Robert A.M. Stern (b. 1939) — whom architecture critic Paul Goldberger has lauded as “the Ralph Lauren of American architecture.” As creators and protagonists of their own time-warping myths, they have few present-day equals.
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