Mitchell Owens talks about one of the leading tastemakers of the 20th century, Pauline de Rothschild (1908–1976), who had an explosive impact on fashion and interior design that still reverberates. Her residences in London, Paris, and Pauillac, France, astounded the cognoscenti of the 1950s and 1960s with their innovative juxtapositions of cutting-edge modern art and rare antiques, staged in lyrical decors that reflected the American-born aesthete's idiosyncratic personal taste. Spare in conception yet opulent in effect, le style Pauline was a strikingly individualistic counterpoint to the fabled gôut Rothschild, channeling memories, emotion, and scholarship into a thoroughly modern, entirely authentic way of living.
