The Edge Of Innocence

Valerie von Sobel—doyenne of the Los Angeles fashion scene, philanthropist, and poker obsessive—turns her apartment near Beverly Hills into an ode ot creativity and resilience

- Valerie von Sobel

“I WANT THEM TO FEEL like butterflies pinned like specimens,” Valerie von Sobel says of the hats shaped like birdcages and boomerangs, sprouting flower stems and petals, which she likes to pin to the walls of her Los Angeles apartment.

“It’s the perfect reflection of city life, where we never have enough room,” she says. “Solutions abound if you think about them, and when you live with your things around you, they create a sort of harmony.”

The 76 ­year ­old artist may be familiar to those who have seen the blog and book Advanced Style, Ari Seth Cohen’s homage to fearless chic at any age. One of L.A.’s most uniquely dressed denizens, von Sobel has amassed an Instagram following 26,000 strong of people from all over who tune in to see her eclectic outfits involving everything from leather aprons to lacy white pantaloons.

“Her personal style, interior design, and art seamlessly meld together in a cornucopia of creativity and otherworldliness,” says Cohen of his friend and frequent dining companion.

In addition to being a fashion enthusiast (vintage mostly, and no logos), von Sobel is a philanthropist and former decorator. A native Hungarian who fled to Toronto, she was also a minor actress who had dalliances with Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley afterbeing “imported” from Canada to Hollywood as a teenager by 20th Century Fox.

She splits her time between a 200­acre country home in Idyllwild, California, and this 1,800­square­foot pied­à­terre, which she bought in 1993 and redesigned in 2015. That year she emerged, like a butterfly, after a dark period marked by the loss of her son, husband, and mother.