Faith Popcorn, thought leader, trend-spotter and flamboyant futurist, never saw townhouse ownership in her own future.
In the early 1990s, Ms. Popcorn (originally Plotkin) was living in a small studio apartment with a Murphy bed, a rental turned co-op. She felt wonderfully comfortable there — until a friend from California, who “had this gorgeous place in Beverly Hills,” came to visit. “She embarrassed me,” Ms. Popcorn recalled. “She said: ‘You are moving! This is ridiculous.’”
The implicit message: Ms. Popcorn needed at long last to act like an adult.
She is, in fact, skittish about revealing her age, preferring to say she is a decade younger than Willie Nelson, whom she adores and who just turned 91. (Go ahead and do the math — we’ll wait.) But Ms. Popcorn is happy to have it known that her consulting firm, BrainReserve, which provides marketing advice to companies like PepsiCo, Home Depot, Pfizer, American Express and Comcast, celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. These days, she works from home: The Upper East Side townhouse she bought in 1995 serves as home and headquarters.
Faith Popcorn smiles at the camera while sitting behind a desk that has two screens, a lamp and several notebooks on it, along with a plaque in front that reads “The future is female.” In the foreground is a dark red couch covered with pillows in bold, colorful prints. There are framed artworks on the wall behind Ms. Popcorn, between two windows with shutters.
