On the Cover: The dining room of the SOPHI award-winning house designed by Ken Stuckenschneider.
Photo by Alise O’Brien
Current Issue
Sophisticated Giving Charity Register, Presented by Stifel
A comprehensive guide to non-profit organizations and charitable giving in St. Louis.
Highlights from the November/December 2024 Issue
The Results Are In!
A complete list of the winners and finalists of the first annual SOPHI Awards, recognizing outstanding work in interior design, architecture and building.
Welcome to the first SOPHI Awards
“Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” Michael Jordan
In the pages that follow, you will see the winning worksof local designers, architects, buildersand artisans. For Sophisticated Living’s first-ever SOPHI awards, we invited individuals to send in their finest work. Since this isn’t the onlydesignawardsgame in town, we weren’t sure how many would actually enter.
We were, in a word, stunned. By the last deadline day, 264 entries had been submitted. So many people took up the mantel that we had to double the number of judges reviewing and assessing the applicants
Text: Christy Marshall, Editor-In-Chief
The Ones to Watch
St. Louis’ rising design stars.
Text: Christy Marshall
Living & Breathing Timber
On a gravelly patch of North St. Louis, outside a gritty old warehouse, there’s a little cluster of trees. One of them is an olive. Another –a blossoming, divinely scented frangipani. The last (aside from a little fig seedling with a promising future) is a 40-year-old lignum vitae–one of the world’s slowest-growing trees with wood so dense it sinks in water. All three are in giant pots which, when the days shorten and temperatures dip, will be forklifted inside to wait out winter under grow lights. Theseare master woodworker Martin Goebel’s “house plants.” Before you even go inside, you get the picture: This guy has a way with trees.
Text: Alexa Beattie
Photo: Richard Nichols
The new dynamite duo heading up the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis can drop some serious names. Artistic Director Kate Bergstrom, for instance, has shared a stage with Annette Bening and Danny Williams, managing director, starred in a Westport County Playhouse production years ago of Our Townheaded by –of all people –Paul Newman. (Joanne Woodward was the artistic director, by the way).To boot, last year, the Rep’s Annual Holiday Experience was headlined by St. Louisan John Goodman. He gave an interview on stage and, fittingly, read T’was the Night Before Christmas. But they don’t mean to brag; this is simply the water they swim in.
Text: Alexa Beattie
Photo: Courtesy The Rep
Excellence, Relevance, and Extraordinary Experience
Why Sell Now?
2024 is coming to a quick close. It seems to have been a whirlwind for me and my family. Our oldest graduated from college, our youngest completed her first college internship over the summer...and we sold our house! Yes! The house that we painstakingly spent a year gutting to the studs, renovating the layout and adding an addition (that included more foundation than I could ever have imagined) to create a home thatwe truly loved. We spent sevenhappy years hosting our family holidays and friends for parties. So, many have asked why we decided to sell our home now when we have plenty of time before our new home is built. The simple answer: The time was right! I talk with buyers and sellers everyday asking when they should sell and buy! So many confusing headlines regarding the state of real estate in our country. Some states are experiencing an abrupt slowing of their market, while others remain brisk.Depending on where you get your news, the reports range from out of control mortgage rates to stabilizing and lowering interest rates (we all need to come to grips that we will most likely never see 2% interest rates).
Text: Julie Lane, Realtor
Event Calendar, Presented by Spirit Jets
Happenings of note in November & December.
Share your celebrations with us, or let us know what events you want to see featured on our pages by emailing editorSTL@slmag.net.
Sophisticated Celebrations
Presented by
Shine the Light Gala
Nourish: A Party for the Pantry
Forest Park Balloon Glow
US Ski Team 80’s Apres Ski Party
All in White at the Glennon Gallop
Two Rivers
In January 1985, my wife and I met in Florence, Italy where we were students studying abroad at the University of Michigan. Over the years, we visited Italy multiple times; when I was the North American publicist for the Italian Government, returning to Florence and Tuscany with friends and kids, traveling as far north as Venice and as far south as Sicily, but we are always lured back to Florence. Now it seems like home.
Most recently, we spent a month living in an apartment on the Arno River two bridges west of the Ponte Vecchio. Each day we lived like Florentines —some days with specific itineraries and others just roaming historic neighborhoods. Regardless of the number of days we have spent in Florence, it never gets old. Each day is an adventure reliving the history of the Medici and walking in the shoes of Masaccio, Donatello, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Verocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Before our last trip, we watched the Netflix series Medici the Magnificentand I re-read the Agony and the Ecstacyby Irving Stone about Michelangelo and Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. More than ever before, I had a great sense of how Florence became the center of the Renaissance and one of the great wonders of the world.
So when I returned home to St. Louis, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could leverage my fascination with how the Medici consciously set out to make Florence the center of the art world to create a spark for creative greatness in St. Louis. The first thing I did was to focus more of our content on art and architecture, interior design and fashion as if to play a small role in the patronage of all things beautiful
Text: Craig Kaminer
From the Publisher
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