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KARA MANN has a reputation as something of a sparkplug in the design world, capable of juicing up a tired setting or a well-known brand with a series of unexpected moves, often carried out in high-contrast black and white. Her clients have included the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan—where her proposed redesign honored the building’s decadent past with ingredients like leather and leopard—and the newly reopened Talbott Hotel, on Chicago’s Gold Coast, into whose sparely furnished guest rooms she introduced leggy bedside tables of…