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"AD Revisits Cher's Homes\nWe take a look back at the private residences the multi-talented entertainer has shared with our readers over the years\nInterior designer Ron Wilson designed the Bel Air, California, residence of Mr. and Mrs. Bono, better known to all as Sonny and Cher. Mrs. Bono developed an eye and a feeling for antique furniture, while Mr. Bono became interested in collecting period paintings and bronze sculpture. The house, therefore, was an actual expression of their personal tastes, wherein the young owners participated actively in the creation of their stylish setting. The resulting home had a young spirit combined with the aura of solidity and permanence that a traditional home can offer. Pictured: A view from the pool area shows the scale and the Mediterranean styling of the house.\nThe breakfast room was designed with a spring garden atmosphere, using a printed floral fabric in bright green for walls, draperies and table cover.\n\"I wasn't going to let it scare the hell out of me,\" Ron Wilson said of another Los Angeles home he designed for the young celebrity couple. Built in the 1930s, the house\u2014with more than 40 rooms\u2014made a strong architectural statement. It was one that the designer could not fight or upstage or change in any significant way. The point was to enhance the interiors. \"Occasionally Cher would call to say something or other was awful. I always told her to look at it again and ring me in the morning,\" said Wilson. Few changes were ever made. Pictured: The foyer.\nMuted tones were chosen for the vast living room, although certain massive objects were used with stunning effect: 18th-century Italian architectural paintings, bronze figures wired as lamps and a large buffet de corps on one wall.\n\"Cher asked me, as she did in 1974 when I decorated her house in Bel Air, to create an environment for her\u2014as I understood her and her particular way of life. I've known Cher for many years, and her life has changed greatly. This house is how I see her personality today,\" Wilson said of the Malibu, California, home he created for the entertainer in 1979. With the spirit of the owner in mind, Wilson sought to achieve an air of tranquility and simplicity through his design. Pictured: Columns demarcate the mirrored dining area, balanced and highlighted by a pair of late-19th-century Egyptian-motif fa\u00EFence vases. The dining table, a hexagon of glass mounted on a sculptural mitred oak base, is surrounded by armchairs upholstered in stenciled leather.\n\"When I first saw the apartment, it was all white,\" Cher said of her New York triplex. Wilson used neutral tones and textured faux-stone surfaces throughout to create what Cher calls \"a prehistoric/futuristic look.\" He once commented, \"I've done all Cher's houses for her, one after another, all 11. She stretches me to the limit, and then some. I've tried every trick in the book, used every drapery treatment, every floor material. She's had everything\u2014and she still insists I do something new.\" Pictured: The third-floor solarium, which opens onto a garden, has draped gauze on the walls and electric shades on the slanted-glass ceiling.\nA contemporary stone-and-glass sculpture stands sentry at the top of the staircase that leads to the dining area. Set against the faux-stone wall at back is a 19th-century French wooden thresher, one of Cher's favorite pieces. Wilson, who designed most of the furniture, used two stone slabs for the dining table. A stenciled leopard print covers the banquette and shell chairs.\nWilson completed the interiors of Cher's adobe villa in Aspen, Colorado, in six weeks. She first saw the house in September, bought it in October and insisted that it be decorated and completely furnished in time to spend the Christmas holidays there with her family. \"When she told me to do it by December,\" recalled Wilson, \"I said it couldn't be done. She said, \u2018Well, kick some ass and get it done.' \" Pictured: In the living room, Wilson used raw silk on the upholstered pieces and kilim fragments on the pillows combined with antique accessories. \"I understand how she likes to be surrounded,\" Wilson said. \"She likes large scale and simple, and she loves texture.\"\n\"The way we work is really strange,\" Cher said of her long-standing relationship with Wilson, who designed a 10,000-square-foot home for the singer-actress in Malibu, California. \"I'll tell him that I want something that doesn't exist\u2014a style that isn't a style\u2014and then he'll make it exist for me.\" As far as she is concerned, building and redesigning houses is as much a creative act as singing and acting. \"I would have loved being a decorator,\" she says. \"I love looking at fabrics and colors, the way objects take up space.\" Pictured: Large vigas were added at the back of her house during renovation to give it a southwestern appearance.\nStone chairs and an ottoman, designed by the late Michael Taylor, complement the capitals used as tables in the master bedroom. Wilson chose the bed fabric because of its resemblance to tree bark.\nCher turned a 1950s house in Miami Beach into a grand villa that reflected her evolving taste, and for the first time, she did not use her longtime friend and mentor, interior designer Ron Wilson. Inspired by Venetian and Moorish design, the house was filled with religious art, richly hued fabrics, carved woods, scrolled ironwork and stone\u2014a dramatic departure from her previous residences, which were marked by sparse furnishings, clean lines and minimal color. Pictured: \"I wanted to introduce color that wouldn't be overwhelming,\" Cher said of the living room. Pieces from her former houses joined furnishings from Sanctuary, a mail-order catalogue that she launched. \"I've always hated clutter, but now I'm surrounded by things I love to look at.\"\n\"My house is so special because it's my sanctuary, my fortress, really\u2014the only place I have any privacy,\" the singer-actress says of her Italian Renaissance-style residence in Malibu, California. \"There's no place else that I would rather be.\" Pictured: English bronze chandeliers hang from the dining room's stamped-copper ceiling. Gothic Revival chairs surround a table dressed in silk taffeta, topped with orchids, candlelit centerpieces and white china with gold trim.\nThe rear fa\u00E7ade overlooks a blue-mosaic-tiled pool and the Pacific Ocean. \"The infinity-edge pool is where I spend all of my time in the summer,\" says Cher. \"She's above the beach\u2014a mile from the water,\" adds Wilson. \"Her great love is Malibu.\"\nIt is a mix of spirituality and spunk that makes Cher's spectacular new duplex, perched high above Los Angeles, as gloriously original as its owner. Cher turned to friend and interior designer Martyn Lawrence-Bullard to help her conjure up \"something ethnic, spicy and romantic\"\u2014albeit in creams, ivories, whites and buttery beiges."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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