MARY RANDOLPH CARTER ON ETHICAL MATERIALISM AND THE JOY OF JUNK

Once every century or so, a woman so epically stylish, so fiercely and independently brilliant, grows up to reshape the world around her, refracting it through her imagination and unique taste. That to me is Mary Randolph Carter, a woman who in many ways is the living embodiment of Diane Keaton as Annie Hall, espousing an electrifying eclecticism that moves beyond mere style and into the realm of visual and aesthetic poetry. Her ineffable coolness, her inspired mélange of found objects, her gypsy-bohemian rock ’n’ roll chic mixed with country-girl insouciance, is best defined as an independent original art form. It was not lost on Ralph Lauren when, many years ago, he recruited her to work firstly in his advertising department, where she oversaw some of the company’s seminal campaigns, and then as his head of publishing, where she has been kept busy with myriad recently launched books.

But it is in her role as an author that Carter wants to change the world’s perception of junk. The things that are rejected or discarded can suddenly be endowed with a sense of worth through the perception of a new owner. And it is in junk, objects that have been charmingly individualised by the ravages of time, that she finds the greatest beauty. In a world that is gut-checking in its consumerism, it is Carter’s ‘joy of junk’ — also the name of her latest tome on the subject — that espouses the