Interior design as a bona fide profession and a concept as essential to the completion of a house as power and water was born in the USA. Like the popular culture that has evolved around art and architecture in the United States, interior design in a multi-million dollar and very serious business whose visual design skills have pervasive influence in many spheres. The flippant stereotype of the curtain draping decorator has been transformed into professional artist with quantifiable credentials and a maximum of stylistic authority.

The canvas is the house, the designer's palette a myriad influences from the prehistoric to the Renaissance, minimalism to the opulent and in doing so, he or she creates a home, often a showplace and sometimes a museum.

Interior Designers set trends, create conventions and establish an ethos for the manner in which people live. The most prominent are flown all over the world gain entree into the private enclaves of the rich, famous and powerful creating inspired environments in accordance with the lifestyles and personalities of the occupants. They wield the considerable power of style over some very important people most of whom would be more likely to fly to the moon on gossamer wings than give carte blanche to even the most loyal employee. But today, a man or woman is judged not such by their clothes as in days past but by their habitats. And they will throw their iron clad designer doors open to only one magazine who will duly photograph and document the results of their designer's decorative wizardry - if, its Editor-in-Chief deems it in good taste.

In cities where the design of the perfect interior has become somewhat of a religious pursuit, Architectural Digest has a devotional following. It is a bible for its disciples, a reference point for the congregation and an index to the accessibility of the diocese whose good works have turned them into celebrities in their own rights.

Its influence is ecumenical spanning Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia wherever homes require cosmetic surgery; from elegant handbook is "The Digest" as both a retrospective anthology of the work of the world's most acclaimed designers and a blue plan for ideas. Heading the interior style council is a remarkable lady who commands an abiding respect amongst designers, their clients and industry associates alike. Like a latter day Solomon she make decisions that ultimately determine what America will look like behind close doors.

One may well expect a formidable presence in meeting Paige -editorial power from behind a marble designer desk. Instead Paige Rense is an elegant, gentle lady, humorous and frank yet unerringly discreet with none of the hardened pseudo-machismo that the prototype 'lady editor' might once have had to exude just to survive: "I don't think it brings out the best in the people to be that way and certainly not in yourself. Everything that we are as a staff is reflected in the magazine in ways that we can never pinpoint. We all really love this magazine and care about it a great deal."

Nonetheless she is fiercely protective of her manual of interior style and claims to be able to kill to maintain the reputation quality and prestige that make it the most successful magazine of its kind in the world.

Originally from Iowa, Paige became a Californian as a child when her family moved from Des Moines to Los Angeles. Early harbouring ambitions to be a fiction writer, editing was never a professional goal, particularly as there were not a lot of opportunities in publishing in Los Angeles at that time. Employed as a Secretary/Editor on a magazine dealing with watersports appropriately entitled 'Waterworld' - "which subsequently drowned" - Paige met her husband on an assignment at La Jolla beach. This was not unusual. Editorial policy dictated that she "met skin diving groups on beaches and attempted to write stories around them; I did 'fashion spreads' on seashells and what you could do with them and wicker baskets... Anything," she laughs today from her beautiful office thirty stories above Wilshire Boulevard.

From the outset, her career, she says, has been a series of inadvertently well-planned accidents, one of which took her from public relations for a swimsuit company to general dogsbody cum writer on the then diminutive Architectural Digest. She has since transformed it into a publishing giant.

We've taken a Paige out of Architectural Digest.

Many could take a leaf out of her book.

VIVE: 'Waterworld ' was your first foray into journalism...

RENSE: Yes, and as always, I initially knew nothing about the subject! I went in as a secretary with a title of Editor meaning that since I was being paid as a secretary, I could have this great opportunity to write and be an Editor. I was in Peterson's 'exception' publications'; they were essentially an automotive publishing house, so I was surrounded by all these guys who talked about cars all day. They wanted people who knew about cars - editing and writing were really secondary concerns. My husband was the Managing Editor and there were three of us on staff.

VIVE: So where you say that there was very little publishing in Los Angeles, New York conversely became the centre of the publishing world...

RENSE: New York has always been the publishing centre of the world although everyone thinks that the pace there is so dizzy and frantic whereas here it is laidback and quiet. This is not the case at all. Because I have worked daily in both places, I can say without doubt that the pace here is as fast. But because we are spread out, one doesn't feel that electricity that you do with all those people jammed together and your life in danger! Now, we are on the thirtieth floor here, but if you closed your eyes and thought about all the noise that you would hear on the same level in a New York building - there would be constant traffic; jackhammers and construction for all the buildings constantly being torn down and built up, the din is constant... I think that people confuse noise with activity. I don't go out for lunch here unless it is someone visiting from NYC or Europe that I could not see otherwise, and in fact most people in Los Angeles don't go out for lunches - they have food sent up to the office. In New York everyone does lunch.

VIVE: After your initial entree into writing you changed tack and became involved in advertising and public relations.

RENSE: After Peterson had ceased doing softbacked books, I went to a shortlived teenage magazine that folded also. Such was the basis of my wonderful publishing background! So the next step was fashion and I became the Publicity Director for a swimsuit company. I then became the Advertising Director for a direct selling cosmetics company that is no longer with us but it was a success at the time. I then didn't work for a couple of years but I really did not enjoy staying home and so I crept back into the workforce doing some freelance writing. Then a journalist friend of mine told me of an opening at a magazine called Architectural Digest which I had never heard of. It was pretty much known as a local magazine if anything at all. Knapp Publishing even today is very small compared to the large publishing institutions. We are David and they are Goliath.

VIVE: What was your role when you first started there?

RENSE: The team was very small. The same day I joined the magazine, the first full-time Art Director also joined. There was an Editor, a Secretary and then myself and the Art Director. Then there was a part-time bookkeeper, two circulation people - 12-13 people in total. There was also very little money - certainly there was no photo budget. I had some grand title, a maybe 'Executive Editor', who was an interior decorator from Texas, had never been on staff of a magazine in his life. He had written a letter stating that that was what he wanted to do, and so there he was! He died a few months later in an unfortunate accident and I then became the Editor.

VIVE: What did you perceive as being necessary changes in the orientation and organisation of the Magazine.

RENSE: Well, when I first joined the magazine, the Publisher and Owner had asked me what I thought of it and I was not terribly complimentary. It was run basically on an 'anything' principal magazine, it was pretty much that simple. They showed a lot of very Californian things; everything looked pretty good again but at that point in time, they did not. It had been started by Mr. Knapp's grandfather and it was supposed to come out quarterly although the Editor never made those deadlines. When I joined it was going from four to six times a year.

The idea was that I would join the magazine and turn it around although there was no reason to have any confidence in me at all. On the other hand, it was a very small job and it wasn't a very big deal. My military strategy was based around the notion that it seemed to be time for people to be interested in interior decoration and how it all began. There were so many beautiful European magazines at that time and I thought why not have a beautiful American magazine devoted just to interior design? The designer's relationship with the client would be the key to everything.

VIVE: What about the title relating more pointedly to Architecture?

RENSE: It is a misnomer - it was always a misnomer. It was never an architectural magazine really. From the start it was pretty much concerned specifically with interiors.

VIVE: How did you set about enacting your new philosophies?

RENSE: I thought if I could convince the major interior designers at that time to give me their work first, that would be an excellent beginning.

You see, any work that appeared in the magazine before had usually appeared somewhere else so I knew that it was never going to work unless they could believe that I would turn the magazine around as I said I would and they would consequently give me their work before anyone else. If one believes you, two will, if two do, then will three and so on... So, it started. But, then I add to tell them that I had no money for a photography budget! They were going to have to pay for photography. Needless to say, this all took a long time. The magazine became what I hoped it would become only after five or six years.

VIVE: Who were some of the designers you were courting then?

RENSE: There was Anthony Hail in San Francisco who is still a big name designer. He was the first important designer who believed in me and he was in touch with the whole network so his endorsement meant a great deal. My next breakthrough in terms of major designers giving me their work first was Angelo Donghia. Both Angelo and Anthony were the most important keys but there were many others working then who are still big names today. It turned out to be the Golden Age of design but none of us knew it.

VIVE: Not having been professionally trained as a designer, how then did you make your decisions on what material to use?

RENSE: Well, at first there weren't that many choices but I didn't know any more about interior design than any other woman who has done her own home. I did realise at the time that my ignorance was an asset because I thought that if I was interested in something, I am not that different from the reader so it was very likely going to interest the reader. And I also understood from the beginning - although I didn't realise how important it was - that I was doing a magazine - I was not judging a design contest. I never tried nor am I trying now to make it a pure design publication. I think only of the reader and only what will appeal to them. If they like something very, very decorated, there it is; if they like a country style environment , it is there too and so is an example of the minimalist style.

VIVE: How did you go about familiarising yourself with all the elements of the interior design?

RENSE: I quickly learned the big names in interior design - those who were the most successful and sought after, one of whom was Anthony Hail. I started seeing their own places and that educated my eye. Obviously, I had read all the interior design and home magazines as most women have and I had always hung around museums, art galleries, antique shops ... just because I was interested . So, I think I learned mostly just by seeing the interiors of the best designers who were working at the time. It is the way we educate our eye - if you see the best, you come to know the best. They were all doing very individual things so it was all very eclectic.

The most talented designers are really those who were born with that talent - with an extraordinary visual talent that might have been channelled in another visual direction but happened to go into interior design, although one or more designers have told me in the past how they had redesigned their parents' houses for them when they were children. So, it is almost genetic, like being born with a talent for music. Obviously, many women would have been born with the same talents but they would most probably have utilised them within their own homes or more likely, to please their husbands and families - as women did - as opposed to a profession.

VIVE: You must have contributed enormously to the definition of the 'Los Angels interior designer' as opposed to the New York counterpart.

RENSE: Yes, I believe very much so. At that time, the New York magazines really scorned the Californian designers with the possible exceptions of Tony Hall and Michael Taylor. Of course the scales of apartments and spaces on both coasts differ enormously, but if you are doing a national magazine, what does that matter? I have always tried - and it is very difficult - not to do either a Californian or a New York magazine but an international magazine with the emphasis on this country and to show things in Houston, Dallas, Detroit, wherever they come. For two reasons, this is very difficult.

Firstly, if you are in interior designer, you know where you are aiming to work - like an actor wanting to go for Broadway - you would want to go to a big city where more people are doing interior design. That is perfectly logical. The other thing, I might add, is that I am perfectly happy to show an interior that a civilian, if you like, has executed themselves. But, I have thought about it and I think that in this country we simply do not have the visual heritage that they have in Europe. They have grown up surrounded by beautiful buildings, the great architecture they have inherited and they have absorbed by osmosis these stimuli. We do not have this benefit in the United States.

VIVE: Some would argue though that the American interior designers are far better than their European counterparts...

RENSE: I think that that is quite true if one is talking about interior design as a profession perhaps the Americans are less constrained and a little more adventurous; however, when one is talking about individuals, we do not have the benefit of such a rich visual heritage as I mentioned. With the exception of specific individuals or if you want to go back to Adam when the architect also did the interiors, in today's world, there haven't been many interior designers in Europe. The concept of bringing someone in to do your home was just non existent. One might have Colfax & Fowler of recent vintage help you re-cover a sofa or something but there was no tradition of 'interior design'. It is largely an American concept. What did America bring to the world? Perhaps jazz, baseball and interior design.

VIVE: How does the Digest view interiors by architects?

RENSE: Well, let me say that a good architect is not necessarily a good interior designer. There are a small handful who are and the rest tend to very much the same sort of thing. Architects and interior designers have traditionally been at odds more often than not in this country at least. However, that is changing, not because of any growing respect on either side but simply because more architects are now doing interiors, and more designers are now doing architecture. Architects are designing furniture for example - everybody is designing everything which I think is healthy, wonderful and terrific! So, the lines of division have dissolved in this creative ferment.

VIVE: How then did you combine all the various inputs and stimuli and create the most successful interior magazine in the World?

RENSE: I think people have stereotypes about how Lady Editors are supposed to be. A lot of people expect a Rosalind Russell or Bette Davis broad-shouldered 'career woman' type of the Forties to be sitting in this chair. I protect my magazine and I will kill anyone who threatens it! It's image, integrity and image must be protected. But, to be hard and hardened, I don't think brings out the best in other people [and certainly not] in yourself.

For better or worse I have always had a very singular vision about the magazine and what it could become. And I am still not satisfied with it - I want it to be better and better. I think that I have succeeded in instilling that attitude in my staff and I must say that now I have the most wonderful staff in the world. It has taken years to bring this about because we don't have an editorial pool like they have in New York.

You have to be able to read people! And this goes for the designers as well. It has come to the point where I don't even have to see a designer's work - I just meet them. I don't really know quite how to explain that, it is just a sense. It is very hard to define style because it obviously has to do with authority and yet you can be authoritative in a perfectly awful way as well as in a good way. I have also learned that just because a woman or a man comes into the office beautifully dressed and tailored with an obvious sense of themselves, it has nothing to do with what they do with their interiors. The visual sense in fashion doesn't necessarily follow in interior design.

VIVE: Given that communication is the key to reporting and that your subject matter is so defined, how do you go about interpreting the work of each designer whilst keeping a freshness of approach?

RENSE: I personally have not interviewed people for years, although when I first started with the magazine there was no budget for either photographer or extra writers and so ended up doing most of the reporting, and did so for a long time. I spent lots of time both doing research with the subject, firstly, because I was learning but also I think that if you are doing a magazine about interiors, you have to find something different to say each time. You can't say the same thing about every interior. You have to find that something that makes each one different and appealing. In terms of interviewing designers, many will at first speak in the cliches they have read in other interviews. That can take some time to break through. Or , more often, they are just inarticulate about what they do. I found therefore that what I had to do was to concede that I would be there for a long time and we were just going to sit and talk for a long time. In the course of all of that, I built up a network of friends who became important designers.

VIVE: Back then, whom did you perceive as being your most obvious competitors?

RENSE: (laughing) Initially, I didn't think that we were in a position to compete with any of them! And I mean that - it didn't even occur to me that this little publication could compete with major magazines of the time. They were monoliths: like Mount Rushmore, they had been there forever! House and Garden, House Beautiful.... but then of course, lots of magazines had special sections covering interior design so essentially we were all competing for the same material only I was too dumb to know it! I'm not being coy: I knew that I had to get the material and I had to get it first to make the magazine successful, but in terms of direct competition , these magazines had been so successful for so many years, I just hoped to find a nice niche for a little magazine which I thought would be beautiful but I never dreamed that it would become what it has.

VIVE: What were Mr. Knapp's perceptions of what you were doing and what you had in mind?

RENSE: He obviously had confidence in me because he left me alone and his interest was more in the advertising/business end. But now of course, within the advertising sector there is a tendency towards a certain revisionist history which says that it was all or part of some grand plan all along. It wasn't at all. We just stumbled into it. I'm very fortunate - and this was partly an accident too - in that I was able to absolutely separate editorial and advertising. They are very good, they don't ask me to call on advertisers or try to meld the two sides. I think that has been a problem with many American magazines in lots of fields - there has been too much. 'You do this for me and I will do this for you' type of policy. Readers today are very smart, they know what is going on and they sense so much about a magazine that one may not realise or quantify. For example, if you are doing a fashion magazine and there are 12 pages of advertising about a particular designer and you see a five page story about that designer, you don't have to be too bright too figure that one out! This has become all pervasive and in contrast I have been very blessed really. I think that is probably the biggest thank you I owe to Mr. Knapp in that he has not tried to change that.

VIVE: When did you first make the big foray into the European interiors side?

RENSE: I did it right away. Two things happened: I knew that I had to have people over there to feed me material but I also knew that it was going to be very difficult. The designers were very good about it - they gave me names of people whom they thought could be very helpful. That was the beginning and it just flowed from there. But really the most helpful thing by this time was a fortunate meeting that I had through a friend of mine in Los Angeles. She gave a cocktail party for Derry Moore, a wonderful English photographer who was very well liked. He took wonderful portraits of people, placing the subject in their favourite room or garden, whatever environment represented that person. The pictures were absolutely beautiful and I asked him whether he could take the pictures without the people. He said that he could and so, through Derry, England was opened up for us as was much of Europe because although he was based in Great Britain, he has friends all over the Continent. He was really the key person. He was way beyond a photographer. In fact several of the photographers that we used then, we use now. Some, however, have gone by the wayside. What was good enough then is not acceptable now. True of some designers, staff, etc; the goal has always been to make the magazine better.

VIVE: How do you compare the first ten years of Architectural Digest with the ten years just passed?

RENSE: Well, I think we tend because we are media to look at ten years as just good a peg. It has really been more like fifteen years. I think it was only in the mid-eighties that people became noticeably more sophisticated about interior design. In the Seventies, people were afraid of interior designers: they were afraid the designer was going to come into the house throw everything out and embarrass them. They also became increasingly concerned with what their friends thought about their interiors. Today, there is quite an emphasis on customised furniture and very individual pieces and I think that is a good, positive thing because it implies that person is secure and wants their environment to reflect their individuality and lifestyle. That in turn is more challenging.

VIVE: What do you consider to be the essential duty of the magazine.

RENSE: I want this magazine to interest the readers. I show work that I personally wouldn't care for in terms of living there, but I feel that it is a very good representation of that kind of work. We publish the AD100 which we did for a number of reasons; primarily, because we publish at the back of each edition of Architectural Digest, the address and contact numbers of the designers; the antique shops, suppliers, galleries...however, I discovered that no-one was actually using the guide even though we thought we were providing such a wonderful service! Architectural Digest's AD100 - the top 100 interior designers who have been in our pages - has been an enormous success in response to that. I felt that it was almost like giving a cocktail party and inviting all the readers, designers and decorators and decorators bringing them together in this one book.

VIVE: What are some of the newer trends that have emerged as desirable elements of interiors that would perhaps not have been considered ten or twenty years ago.

RENSE: Possibly folk art. I didn't see folk art in interiors until five or so years ago. Primitive objects. Also today, most homes have their own private gyms where ten years ago it was a 'media room' that one had to install. A tennis court or a swimming pool doesn't mean a thing these days although there are some houses that have two pools because one will catch the morning sun more readily and the other will catch the afternoon sun.

VIVE: Having said that, you must have seen some extreme cases of extraordinarily expensive interiors over the years where people have created personal museums...

RENSE: People know enough today not to give me 'price tag' tours although they used to in the beginning. I have seen some perfectly ghastly things that obviously cost millions and they cross my desk regularly. People often send in imitations of things they have seen in Architectural Digest and usually, from editions released ten years ago for some reason! They either copy bits and pieces of the magazines or they select one designer and try to imitate them. Michael Taylor must be the most copied designer - suddenly everything has bleached wooden floors, white canvas circulate pillows... Angelo Donghia was copied a lot because he was one of the first to do huge, overstuffed, overscaled, upholstered things. Of course there are a lot of copyists in the business who are professional designers and they are the bane of a designers' and our existences. They are doing very well and I try very hard to keep them out of the magazine.

Some of the things that cross my desk with great regularity go way beyond ghastly and into new definitions of awful! I receive everything from a little polaroid to someone who has hired a professional photographer. In one, everything was purple - everything - with the exception of a range of porcelain pigs and cows - I don't mean Staffordshire, I mean junk! obviously, they then thought they might copy Mario Buatta who was famous for hanging his pictures with bows, so every picture had a purple bow. Now, it is easy to say that this is funny, but it makes me sad because most people have spent a lot of money.

If they like it then that is fine; it is not a waste of time or money if they are happy with it. But clearly they thought it was going to be wonderful for a magazine and that makes me sad because it is expensive to do anthing these days. We have these picture reviews every ten days and we go in there hopeful that we will find something sent in by 'civilians' - sometimes we are lucky, but more often we're not.

Having said that, probably, the most talented non-professional I have ever known was the late Mrs. David Murdock, Gabrielle, who was one of my dearest friends but my judgement is not based on that. David had bought Conrad Hilton's huge home and we were having lunch one day, when Gabrielle asked me whether she thought she could do the house on her own without hiring a decorator even though it was not the done thing. I told her that I was sure she could and she did, and did it beautifully. She also did their ranch house in a totally different style. She could have been an enormously successful designer if she had chosen to be. She did the Hay-Adams Hotel for David shortly before she died.

VIVE: One hears some remarkable stories of the relationships between some designers and their clients where the former is called upon to be anything from a marriage counsellor to a best friend. You must have come across some extreme examples of this situation.

RENE: The most unusual instance that I can remember was when I was seeing a house in the Western part of the United States and the lady of the house was showing me through. We were heading out of the house into the grounds and she pointed up some steps to what I thought was a barbecue pit because I could see flames. It turned out that her interior designer had died recently and in what was going to be the barbecue pit she had installed an eternal memorial flame for him. He's not actually buried there, but heavens know why not!

VIVE: Where does the future direction for both Architectural Digest and yourself lie?

RENSE: Architectural Digest will continue to develop. The biggest change in the most recent vintage has been in our theme issues which began with "The Treasure Houses of Great Britain'. Every January we have our all international edition; every June is a country issue, every November is a New York Issue. The AD100 has been a successful project and we have some extraordinary things coming up. It is part of our evolution but I think that the magazine is going to be more interesting, more creative than every before. But, I am not talking about radical change within the magazine. For example, four times a year we do a special travel section and then we also include an architecture special as well. There will be more surprises coming up...

For myself, I don't know. I may be an Olympic diver in two years! I will continue to do this as long as I enjoy it. When I don't, I'll stop.

VIVE: Would you ever become an interior designer yourself?

RENSE: (laughing) Never! No! I know too much about what designers go through to make their interiors happen. Some designers are very lucky - they have wonderful clients and everything goes smoothly but there is the other side too and I would not want to have to be involved in that!