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In his Manhattan apartment early one morning last week, Industrial Designer Raymond Loewy awoke with a start. As he flipped a bedside switch, soft indirect light spread over walls made of egg-crate fiber and over a group of improbable furnishings− a Tahitian drum, Congo ceremonial sword, Chinese helmet, Moroccan fly-switch, Senegalese war hatchet and grotesque Zulu masks. Loewy, who gets some of his best ideas in bed (and no nightmares from the masks), reached for the ever-present memo pad beside his pillow and scribbled a cryptic note: Why not a suction cap for shaving-cream tubes?
The idea captured, frail as it was, Loewy went back to sleep until a Loewy-designed alarm clock tinkled at 7 a.m., turning him out into a world filled with the products of his night & day dreaming. In his black, beige and bronze bathroom, with its motif of Nubian slaves, he plugged in his Loewy-designed Schick electric razor, used a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste he had modeled for Pepsodent, tore off the wrapper he had designed for Lux soap. Even the expensively tailored grey suit he put on was his own snugly fitting creation. Its special feature: inch-and-a-half cuffs on the sleeves, which could be replaced when frayed (a designer's fray quickly).
In the combination living & dining room, glittering with thousands of flecks of gold-colored plastic thread woven in chairs, sofa and carpet, the huge mirror forming the far wall parted; through it, from her hidden boudoir, stepped Viola Loewy, his 28-year-old bride of less than a year, to join him at breakfast.
After eating, Loewy descended ten floors to his spanking new 1950 Studebaker convertible waiting at the curb. That he had designed too—along with all the Studebakers since the war—and thereby helped set a new fashion in automobiles. Loewy's own car had a few special flamboyant frills: a plastic tailfin, a tiny gold grilled air scoop above the emblem on the hood, recessed door handles, porthole windows and other eyecatchers to start pedestrians' tongues awagging with-the name of Studebaker− and Showman Loewy.
Man at Work. Loewy and his 143 designers, architects and draftsmen were busier than ever spreading that name & fame on a dozen new projects. They had signed up to modernize Raglands department store on Texas' famed King Ranch (TIME, Dec. 15, 1947); they had just completed the first part of a face-lifting for Manhattan's Gimbel Brothers (cried Gimbels in full-page ads: "We are speechless"). Their new two-level Greyhound bus (the Scenicruiser) was being road-tested on Michigan roads. For California they were planning a state fair.
Hardly had Loewy stepped into his muted grey and beige penthouse office high above Fifth Avenue, when more jobs rolled in, e.g., a television maker wanted him to draw up sketches for a new line of cabinets. "Fine," said Loewy. "I spent $2,000 on my own set and it hasn't worked right since I bought it." From Glamour magazine came a phone call: How about an article on theater design? "Wonderful," said Loewy. "I've been waiting for a chance to tell everyone what's wrong with theaters." Then Loewy paced nervously through the various cubicles where his associates were planning new designs for everything from tiepins to locomotives.