Rooms Shape Style

I have always been fascinated by the things people choose to live with.

Not necessarily the expensive things. In fact, sometimes the most revealing object in a room is something very small. A funny ceramic figure picked up while traveling. A painting that makes absolutely no sense with anything else in the room but somehow belongs there. A chair upholstered in a color that a more sensible person might never have chosen.

These things tell us something. Walk into someone's home and, without opening a single closet door, you can often begin to understand how she sees the world.

Does she love color? Is she drawn to symmetry or does she prefer things slightly undone? Are the walls quiet and the objects expressive, or is the room itself full of pattern and movement? Does she collect art carefully, or simply surround herself with things she fell in love with along the way?

I think our rooms reveal many of the same instincts that appear in the way we dress. Personal style does not begin when we open the closet in the morning. It begins much earlier than that.

It is present in the painting we decided to hang above the sofa. In the fabric we chose for a chair. In the flowers on the table. In the books we leave out. In the objects we refuse to throw away because they continue to make us smile.

We are constantly composing. Sometimes consciously. Often not. A woman who loves an unexpected burst of color in her home may find herself reaching for an equally unexpected handbag.

Someone who prefers a quiet room with one extraordinary painting may dress in much the same way, a beautifully simple outfit interrupted by one object that completely changes the conversation.

And a woman whose home is filled with art, curiosities, books, animals, photographs, old objects and things brought home from distant places may have very little interest in carrying something anonymous.

She has already told us who she is. Why would her handbag suddenly become shy?

I think this is one of the reasons interiors have always interested me. A room, like an outfit, is really a composition. Scale matters. Color matters. Texture matters. And perhaps most importantly, personality matters.

The most beautiful rooms I know are rarely the ones where everything matches perfectly. They are the rooms where everything somehow belongs. There is a difference.

A perfect room can occasionally feel as though no one is allowed to sit down. A personal room invites you in.

You notice the artwork, but you also notice the stack of books beside the chair. You notice the beautiful table, but perhaps there is a slightly ridiculous object sitting on it that makes you laugh.

That tension between elegance and surprise is something I love. I feel the same way about fashion. Sophistication does not require everything to behave itself.

A beautifully cut black dress can become much more interesting beside an imaginative handbag. A crisp white shirt can suddenly feel very personal when paired with something colorful and unexpected. Even the simplest clothes can become a backdrop for an object with a story.

The room works the same way. A quiet interior gives an unusual object space to be noticed. A colorful room can absorb another layer of personality because it already understands that more than one thing is allowed to speak.

There are no universal rules. There is only the question of whether the choices feel genuinely connected to the person making them.

I sometimes wonder whether we are actually decorating ourselves and our homes from the same internal palette. Perhaps we are.

We are drawn again and again to certain colors without realizing it. Certain shapes feel comfortable to us. Certain combinations make us happy.

Some women love clean geometry. Others prefer curves. Some are attracted to pale neutrals, natural linen and sunlight. Others want saturated color, glossy surfaces, crystal, velvet, pattern and a little theatricality. Neither is more sophisticated. They are simply different languages.

And once we understand our own language, style becomes much easier. We stop asking quite so often what we are supposed to like. We begin noticing what we actually like. That is where interiors can be surprisingly helpful.

If you are uncertain about your wardrobe, look around the room you love most. What colors are there? What is the object you would save first?

What piece of art do you never grow tired of looking at? Is there something humorous in the room? Something romantic? Something strange? Something very old beside something completely contemporary?

Those choices may tell you more about your personal style than a season of fashion trends ever could. I think this is also why I have never been interested in making handbags that disappear.

To me, a handbag can be part accessory, part useful object and part small piece of portable art. It travels from one world into another.

It may begin the morning sitting on a chair in a bedroom, spend the afternoon beside a café table, appear later against a beautiful dress at dinner and eventually return home to rest beside the objects that somehow seem related to it.

The Secluded with Mona Overture Bag makes me think about this especially. There are women, animals, color and unexpected little visual conversations within the artwork. It does not behave like a neutral object, and I would not want it to.

It feels almost like its own little room. There are things to discover. Your eye moves from one detail to another. And like an interesting interior, you may notice something different the second or third time you look. That, to me, is part of the pleasure.

Our surroundings should not simply impress other people. Neither should our clothes.

The best rooms become more interesting as we live in them. The best wardrobes become more personal as we understand ourselves. And the objects we choose to carry should feel like part of that same story.

Style is larger than fashion. It lives in the chair we sit in, the paintings we hang, the flowers we buy, the places we travel, the books we keep, the jewelry we wear and the handbag we reach for as we walk out the door.

Taken individually, these may seem like small decisions. Together, they create a world. And perhaps that is what personal style really is.

Not simply the way we dress. The way we choose to surround ourselves with beauty, curiosity, humor and the things that make the world feel unmistakably our own.

~ Carol