Beige, greige and a side of blasé
Dear interior design world, enough is enough
I made a made a post in my “notes” section of Substack a couple of days ago:
The post shows a video clip of me painting over a collaged image of a beige interior that I tore out of this catalogue begging the question why the interior design world has this ridiculous obsession with everything that is beige. Beige to me is basically colorless. Beige is boring. Beige is vanilla. I mean come on, can’t we do better? In a world where we’re all working so hard to define the individual, to follow our own path, to express our deepest desires, are you telling me with all sincerity that the BEST we can do is beige?
This particular post has been my most popular “note” to date on the site receiving over 100 likes in about 48 hours time (last I checked without being a dopamine obsessed fool was 113 likes). That’s a lot of likes for my account here on Substack, so hey, I must be connecting with folks here who understand my angst with this issue. My husband who works in construction has experienced the same annoyance as he witnessed panoramas of greige (grey + beige) dominating the apartment industry a few years ago. Now it seems that same world is inundated with beige, which frankly isn’t any more inspiring. If you wonder why this is happening, it seems as though social media platforms are pushing the notion that beige interiors are trending as “quiet luxury.” My, oh my, who doesn’t want to live in “quiet luxury?”
For some reason our home received an RH Interiors design catalogue in the mail which I would say was a mistake on Restoration Hardware’s part. I mean we have never ordered from them. We don’t own any RH pieces. I couldn’t even tell you where our furniture came from, because it came with the house when we bought it. Our home is great and it’s lovely, but it’s definitely not what I would consider high end. Oh do I love a good Louis Vuitton bucket? You bet your sweet ass I do, but I would definitely say that our comfortable abode is a far cry from anything with the word “luxury” attached to it. This RH catalogue, that showed up on our doorstep, presents page after painful page of bored-out-of your mind beige. With coffee tables at $2000, dresser drawers at $6000 and canopy beds for $8000, I guess you could say they’re not Boca do Lobo (clearance priced sofas are $26,000), or Fendi Casa (sofas for $13,000) but they’re still Restoration Hardware expensive. Good thing we’re not in the market for furniture right now. I guess if we came into a shit ton of money, after today’s research, I will now know where to go shopping. But if I’m going to spend any of those hard earned Florida Lottery dollars on these guys and their “Modena” line of end tables, they’re going to have to step up their color wheel game before I drop one dollar at their store.
If all that beige is a nod to offering a warmer and cozier environment than white or grey, I get it. I know, like everyone else on the planet, that all of our lives changed post COVID. I guess that people wanted warmer and more welcoming home environments after being stuck in them all the time, and seemingly beige offered a respite from a cold and unwelcoming world. You could argue that the neutral tones provide for a blank slate, that they pair well with just about anything, and I guess that might be true. But when I thumbed through this aforementioned RH catalogue of no less that 595 pages, the only color, the only hue I spotted in there were greens from an occasional fern placed on a table, or when you could see a tree through a window. The ENTIRE catalogue was beige. I wanted to throw up. If this is luxury, I want no part of it.
So I embarked on a funny little exercise. I took a couple pages out of the catalogue and made them into rooms I wanted to be in. I used lavender, grape and violet and created a great big abstract painting to hang on the wall in the background.
I took gold and ochre, mixed ice and Prussian blues and created my own little slice of heaven. It was a funny little exercise. One where I could use my journal in a different way, almost like a vision board of sorts, creating and envisioning environments influenced with my flair, with my colors that bring me joy, just like I was in my own episode of Design on a Dime without spending a penny. You too can try this out at home. All you need is a journal, a current design magazine and some acrylic or gouache paint. You’ll have a ball transforming this boring and blasé palette into a gelato shop! Bubble gum pinks here, pistachio green there, hey how about a little midnight blue as an accent? I mean, how can you go wrong with Midnight Blue!??? It’s a color straight out of your 1970’s box of Crayolas. Everyone LOVES a beautiful midnight blue! With my beloved hues I also created this little gem of a room:
I called it “Blue Velvet,” as I was daydreaming of how that couch would feel against my skin as I sprawl out on it after a long hard day of painting and blogging, those fibers twinkling under my tippy toes. My butler just might bring me a Negroni! If I could ensconce myself in any fabric, it most definitely would be velvet, just like George Costanza, or my favorite line from Coming to America, “What is that, velvet?” Oh the fantasies I come up with in my silly little journal. You see, my Sketchbook Diaries are not for only studying the mind through meditation or exploring my painting styles or even honoring the late great Frida Kahlo. My journal can help me live out my greatest hopes, dreams and desires, all with the use of some simple tools and an ounce of imagination. And it can do the same for you too!