The trend is exacerbated by a saccharine nostalgia for Disneyfied visions of pre-Revolutionary Russia, spawning ersatz reproductions of old churches, kitschy neo-Classical apartment houses and McMansions straight out of an episode of "The O.C".
The neo-Classical apartment, executed by Richard Gillette, an interior designer and painter, was a fitting accompaniment to Mr. Leiba's life when he was creative director of Harper's Bazaar.
But there was also the spectacle of watching a space hostess defying gravity in a tubular corridor, and the claustrophobic scenes involving HAL, and that whole final sequence – from time-warp to neo-classical apartment to planet-sized star child – which dealt with any fuses left unblown in my early-teenage brain.
"It's the classical Roman apartment with frescoes on the wall," the former official said.
His usual circuit took him to Betty Comden's apartment, the classical-music section of Tower Records, and back home via Zabar's.
In 1973, she married the art dealer Michael Findlay and lived in an apartment filled with classical music and fresh flowers.
Watching Roitfeld do a private ballet class accompanied by classical piano in her Paris apartment was such a thing of beauty it inspired me to take up dancing.
Some of the "differentness" of Art Nouveau survived into Roth's projects of the 1910's, like the abstract, stylized Classical ornament on his 1916 apartment house at 601 West End Avenue (at 89th Street).
Known as the Park Cinq, the Modernist limestone-clad Emery Roth building, at 60th Street, went up in 1960 with the mandate that each of its apartments resemble a classical mansion.
They all went to the listed address, and, standing outside the apartment door, they heard classical music playing inside.
I love spending time with the Classical statues in archaeological museums; my apartment is decorated with dance imagery from different cultures and centuries.
