LM Pagano: East meets West by way of the South

By David Hay, Special to The Times

LM Pagano's L.A. house looks and feels more like a slice of New Orleans than Hollywood Hills -- fitting for someone whose career has been full of surprises. As a teenager, Pagano made shirts out of antique fabric for Bob Dylan and embroidered jeans for David Lee Roth. In her 20s, she worked as a chef for Steven Spielberg. Later, when she was Nicolas Cage's assistant, the actor came by her house in Santa Monica, fell in love with what he saw and asked her to decorate a beach house for him in Malibu.

Since then, Pagano says, she has done 15 houses and two boats for Cage and members of his family. Other clients include Johnny Depp, who hired Pagano to turn a yacht into what she describes as a "combination of the Orient Express and an Art Deco gypsy caravan."

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