All in the Family

Cosmetics star Jeanine Lobell and actor Anthony Edwards create a colorful, eclectic family home

Written by Kathleen Hackett • Styled by Carlos Mota • Photographed by William Waldron




Jeanine Lobell traces her success to a day out with her father in her native Sweden when she was a teenager. “We were walking together on the street, and he pointed to this little hot-dog vendor,” she says of her father, who supported her artistic endeavors from an early age. “He explained that nobody was telling the man to spread the mustard just so for maximum productivity, that he owned that hot-dog stand,” she says. “He said, ‘Honey, you need to get your own hot-dog stand.’”

Ownership seems to come naturally to the gregarious Lobell, a makeup artist whose unapologetically bold color sense rattled the beauty industry when she created Stila, her cosmetics line, 17 years ago. Never one to follow the rules, the free-spirited Lobell shot shimmer and sparkle through her flirty lip, eye, and face products and branded them with sprightly, stylish cartoon women. This was at a time when most companies were putting out low-key brown and beige palettes in sedate and elegant packaging.

Fast-forward to today, and Lobell is still at it, spinning the color wheel fearlessly, though this time the subject happens to be the Park Avenue apartment she shares with her husband, actor Anthony Edwards, their four children, two Chihuahuas, and a pair of parakeets. The family decamped to Manhattan from Los Angeles several years ago. “We lived in a rambling Spanish-style house in L.A.,” says Lobell, “and serene shades seemed to suit it. But I wanted this place to reflect our current life, which is hardly quiet.”

She found a kindred spirit in architect and designer Rafael de Cárdenas, a former fashion and production designer whose interiors, not to mention personality, effect a gravitational pull on the creative (read: risk-taking) crowd. “I rarely need to get formal approval for my choices from my clients,” the designer says, “which says a lot about the kind of people they are. They’re brave, and they don’t want anything expected.”

But Cárdenas admits that when it came to choosing a palette for the 5,000-square-foot space, a full floor in a prewar building achieved by his deft marriage of two apartments, he deferred to the queen of color. “Jeanine is very exacting on that subject, as one might imagine—don’t call it lavender if it’s lilac!” he warns. Indeed, it got to the point where Cárdenas found himself suggesting that Lobell might want to exercise a little color restraint, atypical advice from such an audacious designer.









Then again, Lobell and Edwards are nothing if not gutsy. They married in Reno—on the drive back to California from a getaway weekend—on impulse. He runs the New York City marathon every year to raise money for his favorite charity, Shoe4Africa, which is funding the first children’s hospital to be built in sub-Saharan Africa. Having sold Stila, Lobell is now Creative Director of Kevyn Aucoin Beauty, filling the very big shoes left behind by the beloved founder of the brand. She is also overseeing a line of cosmetics for the über-hip boutique Opening Ceremony.
This is a couple who, not long ago, trekked around the world with their son and three daughters—ages five to 13 at the time—for a full year. Along the way, they purchased a painting of poppies, and the living room’s color scheme was born. “That gorgeous fuchsia? I just had to live with it,” exclaims Lobell. And her husband? “I like what Jeanine likes,” Edwards says wryly. Not that the actor doesn’t have his own design genes—his maternal grandfather was the architect of the original Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.

That flamboyant fuchsia shows up again in the generous foyer, a room that hints at both what Lobell calls her split personality and what lies beyond. The supersaturated Venetian-plaster walls express her penchant for glamour, a pair of simple lamps her lack of pretension, the 1960s wall-spanning credenza her love for midcentury design, and an oil painting brought back from India her informal approach and passion for the exotic. For every space with eye-popping vertical surfaces—the moody purply-blue bedroom, the kitchen’s acid-green cabinets, the exuberant chinoiserie wallpaper in the dining room, the hallway’s playful field of green—there is another in which the walls recede so that the furnishings and art can dazzle. A pair of bottle-green chandeliers pops against the petal-pink walls of the living room. In the couple’s adjoining offices, paintings, drawings, collages, and photos—male portraits in his, females in hers—are hung salon style. A heavy cherry-red Samburu bead necklace brought back from Africa holds pride of place in Edwards’s office. “In every room there are one or two pieces that don’t really go in the conventional sense,” says Cárdenas, “but that’s why the place is so exciting—because it’s just harmonious enough.”

Weaving together such a broad range of passions might throw a less intrepid designer off, but for Cárdenas, it’s as it should be. “A home should be a distillation of your interests, of who you really are. If you’re happy with your life, your space will reflect that,” he says. Looks like the Lobell-Edwards clan is positively exuberant.

Ralph Lauren’s Chic Retreat

The famed designer reinvigorates his Manhattan apartment with spare, all-American glamour

Written by Julia Reed • Photographed by William Abranowicz • Portrait by Richard Corman • Produced By Anita Sarsidi






Minimalism is not a term often associated with Ralph Lauren, whose densely propped flagship store in Manhattan’s Rhinelander mansion has inspired legions. But when he first commissioned the late decorator Angelo Donghia to design the Fifth Avenue duplex where he and his wife, Ricky, raised their family, Lauren said he was motivated by the “simple, almost primitive desire for clean, open space.”

Now, more than 30 years later, he’s finished a renovation that has made the place even more clean and open. Three bedrooms that belonged to his now-grown children have been repurposed; spatial variety was added by incorporating steps to create different levels, making the space seem even larger. “The changes were subtle, but important,” he says. “They really modernize the apartment.” They also involved gutting it and starting over. “There was more than one moment when I asked, Oh, God, what did I do?” he says, laughing. But this wasn’t the first time. During the initial renovation, things got so fraught, he says, he “ended up going to the hospital for a day of rest.”
The original space had been a warren of rooms spread out on two floors overlooking Central Park. “It was beautiful, but not me,” the designer says. “I wanted a Fifth Avenue loft. I’m too casual to live in a stuffy apartment.” After trying to do the renovation on his own, he hired Donghia, who was known for simple lines and sensual textures and shapes, and who became one of Lauren’s closest friends.

Then, as now, the overarching feeling of the apartment was of phenomenal openness, with even more phenomenal views, augmented by predominantly white furniture and fittings. “I deal with color all the time when I’m working,” Lauren says. “This is a way I feel like I can live in New York and be comfortable and simple. When I’m at home, I need to feel like I’m floating on a cloud.” That floating feeling has been enhanced by raising the level of the living room so that you step up into it and by removing Donghia’s matchstick blinds from the windows, which wrap around the apartment and seem to bring the outdoors inside. “There’s a flow and a comfort I like better now,” he says. “It’s about the windows, and the light that comes in from the park. In the evening, with candles lit, it’s almost like an event.”

Further streamlining was achieved by replacing the original herringbone floors, which were stained a medium-brown, with darker wood in a simpler pattern. A structural beam that had been expanded by Donghia into a round, sculptural presence was taken down to its studs; the kitchen and bathrooms are now symphonies of clean lines and glossy surfaces. The tropical bamboo tones and textures that accented the white in the apartment’s previous incarnation have been supplanted by black and chrome. The banana plants that once abounded in the dining room are gone; the accessories now tend to be reflective vases full of red roses, for example, while gleaming vintage lanterns hang overhead. Both the table and the dining chairs (which have taken the place of earlier rattan-and-canvas versions) are Lauren’s own carbon-fiber pieces, inspired by the sleek race cars he drives and collects. “Like the cars, they are built for comfort and durability,” he notes.







The original space had been a warren of rooms spread out on two floors overlooking Central Park. “It was beautiful, but not me,” the designer says. “I wanted a Fifth Avenue loft. I’m too casual to live in a stuffy apartment.” After trying to do the renovation on his own, he hired Donghia, who was known for simple lines and sensual textures and shapes, and who became one of Lauren’s closest friends.

Then, as now, the overarching feeling of the apartment was of phenomenal openness, with even more phenomenal views, augmented by predominantly white furniture and fittings. “I deal with color all the time when I’m working,” Lauren says. “This is a way I feel like I can live in New York and be comfortable and simple. When I’m at home, I need to feel like I’m floating on a cloud.” That floating feeling has been enhanced by raising the level of the living room so that you step up into it and by removing Donghia’s matchstick blinds from the windows, which wrap around the apartment and seem to bring the outdoors inside. “There’s a flow and a comfort I like better now,” he says. “It’s about the windows, and the light that comes in from the park. In the evening, with candles lit, it’s almost like an event.”

Further streamlining was achieved by replacing the original herringbone floors, which were stained a medium-brown, with darker wood in a simpler pattern. A structural beam that had been expanded by Donghia into a round, sculptural presence was taken down to its studs; the kitchen and bathrooms are now symphonies of clean lines and glossy surfaces. The tropical bamboo tones and textures that accented the white in the apartment’s previous incarnation have been supplanted by black and chrome. The banana plants that once abounded in the dining room are gone; the accessories now tend to be reflective vases full of red roses, for example, while gleaming vintage lanterns hang overhead. Both the table and the dining chairs (which have taken the place of earlier rattan-and-canvas versions) are Lauren’s own carbon-fiber pieces, inspired by the sleek race cars he drives and collects. “Like the cars, they are built for comfort and durability,” he notes.

The one thing there is more of in the new space is art. “I love the architecture of the blank walls, so the art had to be personally important to me,” he says. “I’m not about status paintings—they have to be important to me or Ricky.” The Star Wars figure that now occupies the spacious entrance gallery was a Father’s Day gift from his family. “I have always liked toys—my office is filled with small toys and characters,” he says, “and we saw all the Star Wars movies with our kids.” He likes the piece—“so stark and so white and graphic”—paired with a gutsy motorcycle painting that previously resided in his office. Other artworks include a Batman painting by his nephew Greg Lauren and a Bugatti sculpture of an elephant that appealed because, he says, “I have Bugatti cars.” Another favorite piece is a figure in a top hat and tails straight out of a Ralph Lauren ad that stands guard by the living room fireplace. “It’s just a unique sort of Fred Astaire character,” he says. “Like everything else, it’s very personal. All of them have a connection to my life or point of view.”

Asked if he gazes at the heavens through one of the apartment’s two telescopes, he laughs and says he hasn’t had the time—and besides, who needs to look further than the spectacular views? His routine, he says, is to come home, have dinner, and watch TV. In the mornings he works out in his “nice playroom,” the gym located off the kitchen. “This apartment was not made for entertaining—though we certainly have entertained here,” he says. “It was made for a more private life.”

His life with Ricky and his family plays out in a number of homes: the country estate in Bedford, New York, a sort of tweedy stone house set on a beautiful piece of property; the low-slung Frank Lloyd Wright–ish complex on the beach in Long Island; the ranch out West; and the tropical fantasy of Round Hill, Jamaica. “They are all uniquely wonderful,” he tells me, but it’s his urban aerie that he finds the most soothing. “It’s exactly what we needed as an escape from our hectic lives.”