Geo Goes Upbeat-and Uptown

By Mary Earle, Alessandra Stanley

Under Editor Paige Reuse, the world will be a neater place

Geo was never the kind of magazine that Architectural Digest Editor in Chief Paige Rense wanted around the house. It was glossy and expensive ($4 per copy) all right, but it was also depressing. Too many images of death, disease and disaster. "Pictures of animals being slaughtered," she shudders. No dream houses on fantasy islands. All that is about to change. After two years and about $30 million in losses, the German publishers Gruner & Jahr have just peddled the monthly Geo (circ. 256,000) to Los Angeles-based Knapp Communications, which publishes Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit. Geo's new editor in chief: none other than Rense. Says she: "The magazine will have no more news, no more ecology, no more people lying in gutters with open sores. It will be timeless and a pleasure to read."

This will be like turning pigs' knuckles into pate, but Rense, 47, has performed similar transmutations in the past. Cleon Knapp's Architectural Digest was a little-mown trade journal with a circulation of less than 50,000 when Rense, an advertising representative for California sportswear and cosmetics firms and a sometime freelancer for Cosmopolitan, applied for a job in 1970. When Knapp asked what she thought of his magazine, Rense replied: "Boring and poorly edited." She was hired on the spot. With a monthly circulation of 558,000, Digest in the past year carried more than 1,400 pages of high-tone ads (Ferrari, Cartier, Courvoisier) and had revenues of $32 million. More than a third of its readers are corporate board members, and one-fifth are millionaires.

Still loosely edited, the magazine gushes on ad nauseum about the "intimacy" of luxury home furnishings, and despite its name, it has little to do with architecture. But Architectural Digest aims to dazzle the eye, not challenge the mind. Each issue contains about a dozen lavish photo tours of opulent homes that have been transformed by top interior decorators. Average decorating budget: $200,000. Frequent peeks into celebrity homes add to the vicarious thrills. In recent years Digest readers have visited the likes of Ali MacGraw, Robert Redford, Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand. Says Rense: "Digest is an elitist magazine. But I don't think there is anything wrong with being rich."

Rense selects the 200 or so homes that appear in Digest every year by sorting through some 2,000 portfolios submitted by decorators and then visiting prospects that strike her fancy, squeezing in as many as three in an evening. If they pass her muster, homeowners must endure several days of photo sessions, during which Digest teams may rearrange the furniture or even add plants, paintings and sculpture to dress up the finished product. The competition to appear in Digest has made Rense a powerful figure in decorating and design circles, not to mention a sought-after guest of honor at exclusive parties.

A native of Des Moines who attended California State University in Los Angeles, Rense says she has turned down bribes -- and at least one proposal of marriage -- from people who wanted to be in Architectural Digest. If homeowners are flattered to be picked, decorators and builders have more pragmatic reasons to court Rense. Says Architect John Lautner: "Digest's readers are people who have money and are willing to pay for what they see in the magazine. Whenever I appear in Digest, I get commissions right away." While Rense's taste nettles some decorators, she is given high marks for the way she handles her power. Says Los Angeles Designer Bernard Kovner: "You never hear horror stories about her. She's one of those people who walk softly and carry a big stick."

After seeing what Rense did with his tired little trade book, Knapp, 45, started throwing other challenges her way. In 1975 he purchased the budget recipe book Bon Appetit from the Pillsbury Co. Under Rense's stewardship, Bon Appetit (circ. 1.3 million) has become the culinary equivalent of Digest, with glossy color photographs of such dishes as caramel cream puff bouchees and oyster and spinach souffle. Says Rense: "I have no interest in a magazine that tells you 1,001 ways to prepare hamburger. I wanted a cooking magazine for people like me who are too busy to cook."

Geo, admits Rense, is "not linguine or Louis Quatorze." But she is convinced that her upbeat formula can lift circulation to 500,000 and put the magazine into the black. She plans articles about travel, exploration, anthropology and archaeology, some of them written in the first person. "I think people enjoy reading about people." The magazine will be redesigned, starting with the cover, whose thick green border confused readers and newsstand dealers; it was hard to tell issues apart. Rense anticipates "close, intense involvement with Geo for the first six months," returning from Manhattan to her home in Beverly Hills most weekends. She will continue to edit Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit and entertain on both coasts. If that is not enough, she has begun test studies for new magazines on collecting and travel. "I rarely feel overwhelmed, though," she says. "When too many things go wrong, I just eat two pints of ice cream and everything seems O.K."

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