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"Dallas has never been a city that looks back for very long. And that fast-forward button is mashed down especially hard now, when pockets here are flush and ambitions are high. Apartment towers are popping up like jonquils in spring. Jackhammers announce with gusto that the new theater by Dutch genius Rem Koolhaas is being built over here; over there will rise a new opera hall by British architect Norman Foster. The ribbons have been snipped on a W Hotel and a Ritz-Carlton, and another luxury hotel, Mandarin Oriental, recently broke ground. By the end of 2009, visitors will be able to see, on one block alone, four arts buildings designed by four different winners of architecture&amp;#039;s celebrated Pritzker prize: Koolhaas, Foster, Renzo Piano, and I. M. Pei. And construction is underway on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, an ethereal span by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that will cross the zigzagging Trinity River and its low, lush banks.  Forget the Dallas that has been portrayed on television for decades, all big hair and cowboy boots. Founded as a trading post in 1841, this city of 1,250,000\u2014the population ratchets up to 6 million if you count the entire suburban sprawl, which makes it the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country\u2014is on the brink of becoming the queen of the Southwest. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s an emerging urban center with all that implies: cultural, economic, design and fashion, gastronomic, architectural,&amp;quot; says Frank Welch, the patriarch of progressive Texas architecture. So put the wagon wheels out of your mind, at least for a moment. Interior designers such as Jan Showers are busy glamorizing the city with deluxe furniture in mirrored Art Deco mode, and avant-garde buildings are everywhere you look, especially private residences. One of the finest is the glass-and-enameled-aluminum home that Richard Meier designed for art-collecting grandees Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. Part private residence, part museum, it seems untouchable behind its slatted gate on plush Preston Road, but it is open for business\u2014so take a guided tour of the gleaming white structure and see the four tilted planes of grass that artist Robert Irwin created in the lawn. The house and its astounding collections have been promised to the Dallas Museum of Art in a landmark joint bequest by three local families. It is a jaw-dropping gift that will result in the donation of hundreds of works by modern-art provocateurs such as Lucio Fontana, Kiki Smith, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. For the architecturally inclined, there are multiple pilgrimages to make: the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, where the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre (Koolhaas) and the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House (Lord Foster) are under construction; and Pei&amp;#039;s upside-down wedge of a city hall downtown and his luxe limestone Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. For a 1954 version of futurism, don&amp;#039;t miss the embossed-aluminum Republic Center Tower I downtown, complete with a rocketlike spire. Posh Highland Park is packed with 1920s mansions built for newly monied nabobs, and Turtle Creek Boulevard is lined with elegant midcentury high-rises. One picturesque exception to the space-age apartment buildings along this storied thoroughfare is the whitewashed Arlington Hall at Lee Park\u2014it&amp;#039;s a copy of Robert E. Lee&amp;#039;s Virginia mansion\u2014where grande-dame decorator Beverly Field held her wedding reception way back when because, she maintains, it was as close as she could come to &amp;quot;a piece of good Palladian in this town.&amp;quot; Experiencing the barrel-vaulted Nasher Sculpture Center is another master-builder essential. Designed by Piano, it houses a mind-boggling collection that was assembled by Raymond Nasher, the late real-estate developer, and his wife, Patsy, who had a passion for the works of Calder, Giacometti, Mir\u00F3, and Moore. Across the street from the Nasher stands the Dallas Museum of Art, a regional powerhouse with more than 23,000 works, including African, ancient American, and contemporary. Tucked inside it is a mini-museum made up of five rooms reproduced from Coco Chanel&amp;#039;s South of France villa, jammed with antiques and Impressionist paintings collected by a later owner of the house, Wendy Reves, a Texas-born fashion model turned Winston Churchill confidante.  If you are in the mood to peruse stellar art by homegrown talents, set your sights a few minutes north to Tracy Street, where Talley Dunn and Lisa Brown of Dunn and Brown Contemporary represent some of the best the state has to offer, including Vernon Fisher, Sam Gummelt, David Bates, and Nic Nicosia. And a number of major art galleries, both established and new, have been packing up their canvases and heading to Dragon Street in the increasingly magnetic design district. &amp;quot;We are finally reaching a younger generation of Dallasites, and it&amp;#039;s making a difference across the board,&amp;quot; contemporary dealer Holly Johnson says. &amp;quot;The city is extremely energetic and has thrust itself well into the 21st century.&amp;quot; This appetite for all things up-to-the-minute extends to dining as well, so unfurl a napkin. Though there&amp;#039;s enough great Tex-Mex here to keep any enchilada fan satisfied, Dallas is rife with fresh-faced restaurants manned by young chefs going their own ways. Seek out the tiny spot called York Street, where demure Sharon Hage (she&amp;#039;ll never tell you she&amp;#039;s been nominated four times for best chef in the Southwest by the James Beard Foundation) changes the menu daily. Some of Hage&amp;#039;s recent delicacies have included skate with a lobster-and-saffron broth and rabbit braised in Moscato. In the forever-up-and-coming urban neighborhood known as Deep Ellum is the restaurant Local, where Tracy Miller, an equally modest kitchen talent, spins comfort food into heavenly fare for a clientele she calls &amp;quot;sophisticated in a friendly way, discerning, confident, and eager.&amp;quot; Miller&amp;#039;s words unwittingly describe Dallas to a tee. A short drive across the Trinity River lands you in the bohemian burg of Oak Cliff, with the buzzy Belmont Hotel (a recently restored 1946 colonial-Moderne motor inn whose bar and bistro are frequented by Dallas&amp;#039;s hip caf\u00E9 society) and Bishop arts district, the latter invigorated with clever shops (e.g., the Soda Gallery for obscure colas) and restaurants (Hattie&amp;#039;s for low-country Southern; Veracruz Caf\u00E9 for Mexican-Mayan). There&amp;#039;s even a new neighborhood watering hole, Quinn, where the hummus is as flavorful as the conversation. But the place where they&amp;#039;re packed Prada to Prada is Tillman&amp;#039;s Roadhouse, a riot of pine-plank walls and crystal chandeliers that is a fitting backdrop for chef Dan Landsberg&amp;#039;s gourmet regional food: The menu includes skillet corn bread, chipotle BBQ ribs, even tableside s&amp;#039;mores. &amp;quot;There is no fear here when it comes to making a personal statement,&amp;quot; Brian Bolke says. He is, in fact, not talking food; he&amp;#039;s talking fashion. A co-owner of Forty Five Ten, the foremost boutique in this part of the Lone Star State, Bolke and partner Shelly Musselman shower Comme des Gar\u00E7ons, Dries Van Noten, and Maison Martin Margiela on the city&amp;#039;s edgiest-dressed residents, including the Grammy-winning R&amp;amp;amp;B singer Erykah Badu (nonresidents like Gwyneth Paltrow are clients too). Independent shops with strong points of view are plentiful in these parts, like the new Elle by Elements, a spin-off of Elements, a highly admired local boutique.  Dallas is a city full of people who love what they wear\u2014dressing well is what the century-old department store Neiman Marcus is built on\u2014and now there&amp;#039;s a monument to celebrate their sartorial devotion. Selections from the 15,000-plus pieces of the Texas Fashion Collection\u2014Chanels, Balenciagas, Norells, and so much more stored at the University of North Texas in Denton, 40 minutes north of the city\u2014are now displayed at Fashion on Main, an exhibition space located in the skyscrapered downtown. &amp;quot;Fashion has an intangible allure,&amp;quot; says Heidi Dillon, who helped spearhead the project and led its early fundraising efforts. &amp;quot;It attracts glamour, money, beauty, and commerce to a city. Look at what the Metropolitan Museum of Art&amp;#039;s Costume Institute does for New York. We want that for Dallas.&amp;quot; When you&amp;#039;ve had about all the red-carpet glamour you can handle, there is always coolly quirky home decor. A must-see is Grange Hall in the bustling Knox-Henderson neighborhood, where owners Jeffrey Marion Lee and Rajan Patel proffer Nymphenburg porcelain and eccentric accessories such as rubber-dipped chandeliers. At Collage 20th Century Classics, married tastemakers Abby and Wlodek Malowanczyk have established a niche for aesthetes who seek &amp;quot;fine and beautiful original design, revolutionary for its time.&amp;quot; Some of the shop&amp;#039;s recent offerings have included a 1930s Northern European sofa of button-tufted leather, &amp;#039;60s chrome chairs by Greek-American modernist Nicos Zographos, and a 1915 sterling-silver coffee set by Georg Jensen. Jackie Bolin knows all about the new and revolutionary: The former fashion editor just chucked it all to chase her dream of opening a clothing boutique for cerebral young moderns looking for &amp;quot;something not so finished or fussy.&amp;quot; The store she co-owns, V.O.D., is located in Victory Park, a master-planned downtown community that blinks with jumbo LED screens and brims with shops, restaurants, and sparkling new apartment buildings, including one by Philippe Starck that is going up this minute. Luella Bartley, Alexander Wang, and up-and-comers Jenni Kayne and Brian Reyes are just some of V.O.D.&amp;#039;s lines, not only for the Dallas shopper who &amp;quot;wants what no one else has,&amp;quot; Bolin says, but for travelers too. &amp;quot;Dallas,&amp;quot; she says resolutely, &amp;quot;is poised to become an oasis for jet-setting coast dwellers, smack in the middle of the country.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/travel/a3797/elle-decor-goes-to-dallas-a-46253/>