From a New York Times obit by Glenn Rifkin headlined “Paige Rense, Trendsetting Editor of Architectural Digest, Dies at 91”:
Paige Rense, the influential editor of Architectural Digest who transformed it from a local Los Angeles trade journal into a renowned design publication with global reach, died on Friday at her home in West Palm Beach, Fla. . . .
Over almost 40 years as “the archduchess of decorating,” as she was once called, Ms. Rense made Architectural Digest the most popular publication in the shelter market, focusing on the work of interior designers and architects — often making stars out of them — and highlighting the homes of movie stars, world leaders and international power brokers.
With colorful prose and striking photography, the magazine displayed the lavish homes of celebrities like Katharine Hepburn, Elton John, Julia Child, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, King Hussein of Jordan and countless others. Celebrities clamored to be featured in the magazine.
An exclusive spread on a visit to the private White House quarters of President Ronald and Nancy Reagan in 1981 set the tone for Ms. Rense’s efforts to extend the magazine’s reach and influence.
Hiring well-known writers and award-winning photographers, she sought to make it a “design bible” of the industry worldwide, and she largely succeeded. She created a network of international correspondents to give world political leaders and celebrities a presence in the magazine, and she added editions in a half dozen countries. . . .
Special issues became her hallmark — Hollywood at Home, Country Houses and Exotic Homes Around the World, to name a few.
Her critics, and there were many, saw the magazine’s contents as pretentious and its sensibility as nouveau riche, but faithful readers treasured it, and such criticism only fueled Ms. Rense’s determination. . . .
Ms. Rense was known as a highly competitive, sometimes spiteful tastemaker who insisted on exclusivity and brooked no pushback from designers she had snubbed. Those who crossed her were often said to be banned forever from the magazine’s pages. . . .
So sought-after was a placement in the magazine that designers were known to send expensive gifts to win her over. In the 1990 Times Magazine profile, she admitted to accepting gifts from decorators who were her friends, but she denied that she could be so easily bought by what her critics called a “rat pack of designer pals.”
“It never occurs to designers that they’re rejected because they’re not good enough,” she said. “Anyone who knows me knows you can give me 20 fur coats, diamonds — it won’t get you in the magazine.”
A high school dropout, Ms. Rense had no formal training in design, but over time her intuitive judgment was widely recognized, and so was her decisiveness and utter control: Her word was final on every spread in the magazine. . . .
Paige Rense was born on May 4, 1929, in Des Moines to a mother of Danish descent who gave her up for adoption when the child was a year old. Her adoptive parents, Lloyd R. Pashong, a custodian in the Des Moines public schools, and his wife, Margaret May Smith, named her Patricia Louise Pashong.
When the family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, she dropped out of ninth grade and ran away from home at age 15 to escape her father, who had become abusive. She changed her name to Paige and became an usher in movie theaters, lying about her age to get work, by her account. . . .
Her editorial career began in the mid-1950 at a skin-diving magazine called Water World, where Arthur Rense, a former sportswriter and the father of three sons, was the managing editor. The two would marry and, over time, divorce and remarry. . . .Ms. Rense married the artist Kenneth Noland in 1994, and they remained together until his death in 2010. . . .
Ms. Rense joined Architectural Digest in 1970, when it was a local trade publication owned by Cleon T. Knapp, who was known as Bud. On a small staff, she quickly took on evermore important roles. “In those early years, I wrote every issue myself,” she said.
Then, in 1971, the magazine’s editor, Bradley Little, was murdered in a restaurant parking lot, a shooting that was never solved, and Mr. Knapp asked Ms. Rense to take over, giving her the title of executive editor. . . .
Though Ms. Rense had hardly known Mr. Little — “I had never even had a cup of coffee with him,” she said — she wrote a novel, “Manor House,” published in 1997, loosely based on his murder.
As Architectural Digest’s top editor, she was given the mandate to remake the publication, which is now based in New York. “I knew what it could be and how to get it there — a clear vision that never varied, though it took a long time to make it happen,” she wrote.
Condé Nast acquired the magazine in 1993, but not before its chairman, S.I. Newhouse, predicated the deal on Ms. Rense’s agreeing to stay on as editor. The recipient of several design awards, she stepped down in 2010. . . .
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