Colorful Life

The mid-century Kenwood house Margot Siegel built forty-six years ago is bursting at the seams. Her books are stacked on tables and chairs, modern art fills the walls, shelves are packed with photos, inadvertent collections pop up everywhere, and flora grows with abandon in the sunny living room. “That’s the problem with living so long,” she says with a grin. “You accumulate so much stuff.” That “stuff” includes souvenirs of her life’s rich history as a Women’s Wear Daily fashion editor, Fairchild European correspondent, Walker Art Center publicist, published book author, founder of the University of Minnesota’s Friends of the Goldstein Gallery, and public relations executive. “I’ve learned to be eclectic,” Siegel says. “You don’t have to love just one style.”

COLOR CRAZY: “We originally had purple carpeting, because my husband told me I could either have purple or red—because those are the colors of a king and he’s the king of this house. He was joking, but I went ahead and did it. I loved the purple! And then when I was working at the Walker [in the early sixties], I remember Martin Friedman walked in and said, ‘Augh! Purple!’ I’ve always been a color freak.”

REGRETS ONLY: “When I grew up, we had a wonderful Art Deco dining room set and, unfortunately, in those days I was very contemporary. If there’s anything I regret it’s not having that Art Deco dining room set, which I hated at the time.”

ACCIDENTAL GARDENER: “I have an inadvertent green thumb. I’ve had these plants since I was at the Walker, thirty-five or forty years ago. I don’t even know what they’re called. Sometimes I wish they would just die so I could get rid of them. After all that time, I haven’t the heart to just throw them out.”

ST. PAUL V. MINNEAPOLIS: “I just love being urban. People who don’t come downtown are missing a very important part of what Minneapolis is about. But I was born and raised in St. Paul, which has a whole different feeling. I don’t go there as much as I used to, but it’s got that whole Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby feeling on Summit Avenue.”

A Life Album
A tour of Siegel’s home is a glimpse into a storied life. Her pillow collection was accumulated by default; the wall of photos includes snapshots of her with feminist Gloria Steinem, fashion designer Pauline Trigere, French actress Catherine Deneuve, and New York Times fashion writer Bernadine Morris.