Montecito Style

Firooz Zahedi was born in Tehran in 1949. After a brief career as a diplomat, he enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art and graduated in 1976 earning a degree in Visual Communication. While still at art school he began working as a photographer for Andy Warhol's Interview, and his photographs have appeared on the covers of Vanity Fair, British GQ, French Vogue, Tatler, Time, Glamour, Town & Country, InStyle, and many other publications. Ranging from the iconic poster for Pulp Fiction to album covers for Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, Zahedi has produced prominent advertising and publicity campaigns for film, television, and music companies. His previous books include My Elizabeth, a pictorial book of his long friendship with Elizabeth Taylor, City of Angels, a book on a select group of architectural homes in Los Angeles, and Look at Me, a book of celebrity photographs.

Lorie Dewhirst Porter is a writer specializing in architecture, interiors, and culture. After studying for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, she attended UCLA, graduating with a degree in World Literature and attended law school at USC, practicing law for a decade before entering the publishing world as a legal editor. For the past fifteen years she has written for a variety of lifestyle publications, including as a regular contributor to Santa Barbara Magazine for more than a decade. She lives in Santa Barbara in a house designed by her husband, architect Michael Patrick Porter.