Eccentric Ecclectic, Art Deco, or Midcentury Modern...Does A Girl Have To Choose?
Can we all please look at this picture for an extra five seconds because it took fully TEN tries to convince Blogger that it was worth posting? Thanks. When I was sixteen, listening to The Cure, dying my hair black, and filling my room with enough moody candles to supply about five hundred seances with light I really never imagined that my taste in music, clothes, and the accoutrements of life was ever going to change. Because if they changed then it meant that I was changing, and if I was changing then that meant I wasn't really being true to myself. Aren't sixteen year olds funny people? Then when I was nineteen, living in my own apartment in San Francisco, I was listening to Kate Bush,wearing a lot of interesting earthy medievil type witchy clothes, whipping up my own shampoo in my kitchen with an occasional forray into some fruity Carmen Miranda outfits (I mean, how could I not when I liked to clean house to her music?), and I really couldn't imagine a day when I wouldn't be into ecclectic clothes and music.
The same kind of gradual metamorphosis has occurred with my tastes in architecture and home decorating styles. For the longest time I thought that the only style of house I would really be happy in is a Victorian. Wait a minute, as I'm thinking this out I'm realizing that the home and decorating tastes exactly mirror my musical and sartorial phases. I guess that isn't really a surprise, is it? Anyway, with each house Philip and I have lived in our tastes have been changing. The only real constant has been that we always like vintage or vintage styled things in the mix. We like old stuff. Up until about a year ago I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to ever be into styles newer than the early nineteen fifties. My very good friend Lucille has always had an appreciation for mid-century mondern furniture and homes, mostly nineteen sixties stuff. I remember once, when we were on a drive to a friend's house, she pointed out a sixties house that she particularly admired, and I told her I just couldn't get excited about that style of house.
I'm laughing at myself now because my ever evolving tastes now encompass mid-century modern homes and furniture and if Lucille and I drove past that same home I would probably see it completely differently now. So I keep wondering why it is that some people seem to have one style that they are true to most of their lives (like Lucille for example) and others (like myself) seem to go through many evolutions. Does this make me a stylistic whore? Is there virtue in finding your perfect style and sticking to it for all time so that when you're eighty you can scoff at the five generations who've come after you all discovering what you have already known was cool for the past seventy years? Even as I come to appreciate new eras and schools of design, I don't ever completely let go of the old ones. So maybe this is how ecclectics are made. Is it as simple as that?
Don't worry, I don't lose sleep over these issues. If I'm going to really put time into worrying about something it's going to have to be much juicier and meatier than figuring out what the hell I would call my style. But I got to thinking about it because I found a really cool blog called "Circa 1955" that's written by a woman dedicated to the 1950's in every possible way. I got to thinking how constricting that would feel to me. I need room in my life for my Art Deco furniture, my Ikea shelving, my Rivendale-ish bed, and for the Alexander McQueen clothes I would fill my closets with if I was rich and thinner. How does a person stay within such rigid stylistic confines? I'm thinking that some of us have a comfort zone that once found does not need to ever be expanded again. There's a rich fantasy in that. But others, like myself, enjoy continually exploring different styles. It's not that I'm a fickle person, it's that I'm a person who appreciates form and function like a connoisseur. It doesn't matter when something was designed, if it's designed to function well and look appealing, I will probably find some space in my world for it eventually.
Like the orange pitcher above. It looks like it needs some Tang in it, which I've never tasted in my life. It looks like something Alice would jauntily pull out of the Brady fridge to refresh those bright shiny Brady children. Normally I would not be attracted to such an item. Fiesta Ware is a much more expected purchase. But since developing an appreciation and desire to have mid-century modern things in my life, I find myself attracted to a whole new set of things. I really enjoy looking at this pitcher on my shelf. I'm excited to find some other choice things to populate my home with. This is the kind of adventure that unfolds slowly and I relish with great deliberation.
The same kind of gradual metamorphosis has occurred with my tastes in architecture and home decorating styles. For the longest time I thought that the only style of house I would really be happy in is a Victorian. Wait a minute, as I'm thinking this out I'm realizing that the home and decorating tastes exactly mirror my musical and sartorial phases. I guess that isn't really a surprise, is it? Anyway, with each house Philip and I have lived in our tastes have been changing. The only real constant has been that we always like vintage or vintage styled things in the mix. We like old stuff. Up until about a year ago I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to ever be into styles newer than the early nineteen fifties. My very good friend Lucille has always had an appreciation for mid-century mondern furniture and homes, mostly nineteen sixties stuff. I remember once, when we were on a drive to a friend's house, she pointed out a sixties house that she particularly admired, and I told her I just couldn't get excited about that style of house.
I'm laughing at myself now because my ever evolving tastes now encompass mid-century modern homes and furniture and if Lucille and I drove past that same home I would probably see it completely differently now. So I keep wondering why it is that some people seem to have one style that they are true to most of their lives (like Lucille for example) and others (like myself) seem to go through many evolutions. Does this make me a stylistic whore? Is there virtue in finding your perfect style and sticking to it for all time so that when you're eighty you can scoff at the five generations who've come after you all discovering what you have already known was cool for the past seventy years? Even as I come to appreciate new eras and schools of design, I don't ever completely let go of the old ones. So maybe this is how ecclectics are made. Is it as simple as that?
Don't worry, I don't lose sleep over these issues. If I'm going to really put time into worrying about something it's going to have to be much juicier and meatier than figuring out what the hell I would call my style. But I got to thinking about it because I found a really cool blog called "Circa 1955" that's written by a woman dedicated to the 1950's in every possible way. I got to thinking how constricting that would feel to me. I need room in my life for my Art Deco furniture, my Ikea shelving, my Rivendale-ish bed, and for the Alexander McQueen clothes I would fill my closets with if I was rich and thinner. How does a person stay within such rigid stylistic confines? I'm thinking that some of us have a comfort zone that once found does not need to ever be expanded again. There's a rich fantasy in that. But others, like myself, enjoy continually exploring different styles. It's not that I'm a fickle person, it's that I'm a person who appreciates form and function like a connoisseur. It doesn't matter when something was designed, if it's designed to function well and look appealing, I will probably find some space in my world for it eventually.
Like the orange pitcher above. It looks like it needs some Tang in it, which I've never tasted in my life. It looks like something Alice would jauntily pull out of the Brady fridge to refresh those bright shiny Brady children. Normally I would not be attracted to such an item. Fiesta Ware is a much more expected purchase. But since developing an appreciation and desire to have mid-century modern things in my life, I find myself attracted to a whole new set of things. I really enjoy looking at this pitcher on my shelf. I'm excited to find some other choice things to populate my home with. This is the kind of adventure that unfolds slowly and I relish with great deliberation.