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WHEN OLD-SCHOOL INSPIRES FRESH GLAMOUR IT'S COCO CHANEL MEETS DIANA VREELAND IN THIS GLAMOROUS APARTMENT INSIDE THE MANSION RESIDENCES, DESIGNED BY JOSEPH MINTON AND PAULA LOWES. BY REBECCA SHERMAN. PHOTOGRAPHY EMILY MINTON REDFIELD. INTERIOR DESIGN JOSEPH MINTON AND PAULA LOWES. INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE FUSCH ARCHITECTS. L ike many women whose children are grown and married, the idea of being at loose ends in a large house by herself wasn't appealing for this widow, a member of one of Dallas' prominent automobile- dealership families. So, five years ago she bought an apartment in the Mansion Residences and was soon faced with another dilemma: a vast open space in need of a facelift, and furniture and art to arrange. "Friends kept asking me, 'Who are you going to get to do this?' The first person I called was Joe Minton," she says of interior designer Joseph Minton, who has a roster of blue-blood Dallas and Fort Worth clients. She'd seen his design work at friends' homes and in the pages of magazines such as Architectural Digest, which has featured a dozen of Minton's interiors over the years. It turned out to be a good match. "She wanted to use the furniture she owned, and luckily she has great taste," Minton says. "I was delighted to see her collection of 18th- and 19th-century antiques. I have learned that wonderful furniture — especially antiques — often works for multiple residences in later years." Minton knows a good antique when he sees it. He began buying antiques in France and England in 1971 for interior design clients and opened Joseph Minton antiques showroom in Dallas in 1997. Although his client's new apart- ment has elegant features such as arched windows and marble floors, the contemporary open-space plan felt too stark for her traditional furnishings and classic personal style. Noted architect Robbie Fusch of Fusch Architects stepped in to reconfigure the apartment with custom-designed classical pilasters and columns, which helped define separate dining and living areas. The client wanted to recreate a red- lacquer library from her previous house, so Fusch walled in a corner of the living room for this purpose and added a classical pediment over the doorway for architectural interest. A 71