When her mother, Clare Bingham Cochran, moved to a lakeside home outside of Boulder, CO, in , Brown and her three younger siblings were given carte blanche okay, within a budget to design their own bedrooms. Brown, whose room featured a hanging wicker chair and a piece of Jefferson Airplane artwork, was in decorating heaven.
Despite that early gaudy faux pas, Brown credits her mother, an interior designer, with helping her develop a sense of style. This hippie guy who was a stonemason and his wife came in and did this fabulous fireplace. He put found objects in between the rocks. It was considered very edgy at the time—no one out there was doing that. Her current place to call home—a 4,square-foot, two-bedroom Canton condominium with minimalist pieces, black-and-white graphic art, and panoramic views of the Patapsco—spells simplicity, sophistication, and glamour.
Even her three Norwegian Forest cats, Phoebe, Waldo, and Diesel stylishly striped in black, gray, and white add panache to the place. Before moving downtown in , Brown and her husband, psychiatrist Steven Sobelman, contemplated a serious overhaul of their Baltimore County residence. Aside from the soaring spaces and floor-to-ceiling windows, the real selling point was—what else? I loved the industrial feel.
Even empty, Brown found the space to be breathtakingly beautiful. I came in with the cats, and there was nothing in here. One challenge, says Brown, was to maintain a modern look while also adding warmth. My parents thought it would be a great way to see Europe, so we went to Germany. Those chairs were purchased on a trip to Denmark. Bingham, in turn, married the granddaughter of Charles Tiffany I, and a vase on a dining-room shelf was a present from her uncle, Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Brown, who designed the funky, futuristic, master-bedroom furniture herself and sells her own line of jewelry, is an artist in her own right. Brown majored in theater at the University of Colorado, but after two years, she had a change of heart.
