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"Steps from the shore of Lake Michigan, on a tree-lined street on one of Chicago&amp;#039;s most storied residential blocks, Nate Berkus had a moment. The kind of &amp;quot;aha!&amp;quot; moment that often occurs during the decorator&amp;#039;s home transformations on Oprah or at the unveiling of a client&amp;#039;s newly fashioned space. It was the first time he was seeing the apartment he now lives in, and &amp;quot;it was six in the evening, and the light was beginning to fade. I walked into the living room, saw the lake out the window, and was like, Okay,&amp;quot; he recalls. &amp;quot;It was one of those times when you realize, This is where I belong.&amp;quot;   Berkus&amp;#039;s home -- he has a second residence in Manhattan and shares a place in Milan with his boyfriend, Brian Atwood, the creative director of the fashion firm Bally -- is a handsomely proportioned apartment that dates to 1929. Better yet is how it still reflects the stylish renovation it underwent in the late &amp;#039;40s at the hands of Samuel Marx, a high-society midcentury-modern architect whose talent Berkus fervently admires. &amp;quot;To me, everything starts with the architecture,&amp;quot; the decorator says. &amp;quot;You can either enhance it or ignore it.&amp;quot;  Enhancement was the route he chose to take, restoring much of Marx&amp;#039;s work (the postwar remodel was done at the behest of Inland Steel chairman Joseph L. Block). Berkus preserved the gently distressed silver-leaf wall covering in the guest room, which is now his office. &amp;quot;I like things to have a patina,&amp;quot; he notes. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s something really inherently valuable about imperfection.&amp;quot; Not that he didn&amp;#039;t make changes, such as shifting a beautiful dressing room cabinet a few feet to fulfill his own requirements. Redoing the master bath along with sensitive upgrades in the kitchen -- the decorative panels of Vitrolite glass that covered the walls were too damaged to save, but the metal cabinets remain intact -- rounded out his modernization.  Berkus&amp;#039;s attention to detail is impeccable, and inspiring juxtapositions of texture and style infuse Marx&amp;#039;s distinguished rooms with even more character. An 18th-century Belgian limestone fireplace is home to a pile of pristine birch logs which in turn supports a perfectly placed branch of coral. At the center of the dining room stands a Berkus-designed concrete, bronze, and wood table surrounded by 1940s American dining chairs and illuminated by a &amp;#039;50s Italian chandelier.  &amp;quot;My taste today is pretty much the same as when I was a kid, albeit a bit more refined,&amp;quot; says Berkus, a Los Angeles native who grew up in Minnesota. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always cared about what things look like and how they work together.&amp;quot; His respect for handmade objects developed early as he scoured flea markets with his mother, Nancy Golden, an interior designer. &amp;quot;To me,&amp;quot; Berkus adds, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s all about the hunt.&amp;quot;   Clearly the man knows his prey -- more than 90 percent of the apartment&amp;#039;s furnishings are antique or vintage. That big-mix approach is broadcast loud and clear in the entrance, where a 1940s Jacques Adnet table is deployed near an English Regency chair Berkus discovered at Leslie Hindman, an auction house he worked for more than a decade ago. Combined with the dozens of photographs and paintings by the likes of Jacques Villon, G\u00FCnther F\u00F6rg, and Douglas Reid Fogelson, these items add up to more than a simple equation of fine materials and investment potential. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m more interested in creating relationships between things than I am in sticking with an overall concept,&amp;quot; the decorator explains. In fact, Berkus says, &amp;quot;Most of the things in this apartment I bought without having any idea where they&amp;#039;d go.&amp;quot;  And therein lies the secret. Clients get a more focused approach, but Berkus rarely designs his own homes with a purpose in mind, choosing instead to add and subtract pieces depending on mood, provocation, or the opportunity to take advantage of a better angle. That&amp;#039;s because for him interior design is about participating in an evolution rather than following a standard list of rules. &amp;quot;This living room already has gone through many different incarnations,&amp;quot; Berkus says, pointing to a maze of carefully arranged seating areas. &amp;quot;The way the rooms are mapped out, the way the furniture has been set -- a lot of it was experimental.&amp;quot;  For Berkus, whose work schedule finds him at a Paris flea market one day and visiting a Chicago dealer the next, there&amp;#039;s rarely time to pause. It all sounds glamorous and carefree, but the designer begs to differ. &amp;quot;Decorating is a really tedious, detailed, sometimes painful, often wonderful process,&amp;quot; Berkus says, &amp;quot;but to me the goal is to always find that aha! moment.&amp;quot; Click here to view the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/home-remodeling-renovating/home-makeovers/a3828/nate-berkus-chicago-apartment/>