Who’s Style is it Anyway?
Image from Unsplash
Welcome back, friends. I hope you all had a few relaxing months off the hamster wheel. I know I did. Bidding farewell to summer is always tough for me. It takes me until August to finally get into the groove and then, poof, the world snaps back to what seems more fast-paced and less playful.
Just when I was feeling the atrophy that comes from summer brain, a friend asked me a very interesting question, which fired me right back up again. She said she’d been thinking of a way to arrange her thoughts into words that formed just the right question to pose to me. She was finally able to distill a pretty complex question into a few simple words…”How do I find my style?”
In all the decades as an interior designer, I’ve actually never been asked that question. People have shown me pictures of various styles of décor, but no one has ever asked how to find their own style. I was really impressed at the distinction that my friend was making about finding some way to express herself rather than just copy something already defined in the established milieu of décor.
This question got me thinking about the word style. What in the world is it? And who decides it? We have all been trained that there are trendsetters, master designers, and now, influencers, that have dictated what is stylish. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that these edicts are made by others in-the-know, and something we mere mortals have no say in. This belief has made lemurs out of many of us as we follow, rather than explore, the millions of other possibilities that could authentically represent who we are and what we’d like to say about ourselves. Believing style is something set by others has made us self-conscious and timid for wanting to color outside of the lines, or for not looking like the curated homes in magazines.
This is exactly why I don’t buy fashion magazines. I will never see a body in there that looks like mine, so why try to follow styles (dictated by others) that aren’t suited for it? I’ve got to do my own exploring to find ways of expressing who I am. While I will never be accused of being a fashionista, I always feel and look like me (for better or worse). And the same is true of our homes. Believing that there is some golden standard of style has made us fight with our homes in trying to conform to something that will never feel quite right. It’s made us furnish them with décor we’re told is stylish, but often feels like it was meant for someone or somewhere else.
Image from Unsplash
The irony to style is that great ideas that become iconic and copied, happen because someone had the courage to think outside of the box. They had the courage to self-express or mix seemingly incongruous design elements to create something totally new. Real style is a product of having the courage to get real with one's self. Perhaps courage is what style is distilled down to.
Maybe that’s how we should start to define the word style – as a courageous expression of one’s unique individual flawed imperfect self. Wouldn’t it be interesting to live in a world where people felt comfortable being themselves, instead of feeling inept or unstylish for not conforming?
What if we adjusted our thinking on what is style, from a physical construct or end product to a feeling that a space evokes for us? We might have a better starting point to figure out where to search for our own sense of style. In my own home, it has always been an utmost priority for my guests to feel comfortable and welcomed. I must also love everything my eyes land on. So if that’s my personality style, then I will naturally make design decisions and selections that feed into that priority. And voila! I have a house that establishes and iterates my sense of style.
As for my friend, she just texted to say that she had the courage to look at her house in a whole new light since we spoke. Her home has an asymmetrical layout and was filled with décor items that somehow felt staged or too perfect. Instead of fighting to make her home conform to an established style of design, she is comfortable now finding her own. She is embracing the asymmetry and arranging things in a less conventional way. She is editing out things that she doesn’t need or love or doesn’t represent the beautifully unique spirit that she is. She is feeling more comfortable displaying things that speak to her interests in this world, even though they may seem odd to others. Being authentic to the home and to herself has made such a difference. She feels as if she can breathe again.
I told her that it’s not her who’s doing the breathing – she’s just feeling her home exhale with relief that it’s not being forced into a style that doesn’t suit it anymore.
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