Lifestyle & Aesthetic

Where I live, November is beautiful. The weather is so temperate that you can wear shirt sleeves up until Christmas. The trees are often vibrant — at least there are pops of yellow amid the slowly-sombering browns. As much as my retail-focused mind races straight from September to big Christmas sales, I find my soul takes a little rest mid-November. With my holiday campaigns are put to bed (glittering, gold, and glowing), I circle back around to those cozy browns. It's still time to drink coffee, wander through markets, pile up books, and run my hand along the curves of [...]

Social media has become the suburbs. Once, it was a brand new front tier with tales of ragged exploration. Villages, towns, and cities sprung up quickly — populated by a mix of unexpected characters. Now, even the newest platforms drift into curated aesthetics and planned content quickly. The deliberation is fierce, expected, and capitalized. This is not a criticism or applause. Lately, I've been looking for any disruption in the careful aesthetics that drop before my eyes. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cje8NRXtLjv/ I find seas of beige, with warm, desaturating filters that create enticing contrast between skin tones and shadows. https://www.instagram.com/p/CiSgnzLrd2q/ Then, you find [...]

  Always on the hunt for a good brown, I often reference natural textures. I snap photos of brown things I see in the world and color-pick them in photoshop afterward. Saving the tones out, I delight in tuning and comparing them. It may seem obvious, but the appeal of brown comes from its existence in the real world.  You see it in brands that embrace the senses like food or handmade goods. Chocolate, leather, and coffee beans all evoke the tactile aspects of brown. It's a color for all seasons, but it's most charming in autumn. People usually associate [...]

"And it's yellow!" proclaims Betty Suarez on Ugly Betty when she is shopping for her first apartment. In that episode, she plans to move out of her family home into her first apartment. It's part of her big plan to move her career and life to the next phase. Inside the space, she is charmed by the golden tone the realtor uses to brighten the New York loft. That single statement carries so much meaning. Yellow is the "sign". For a creative, bold girl moving to the city — the vibrant quirky energy radiates. Of course! Her apartment must be [...]

Each monday morning starts with an intention to write. I may be drafting with my head on the pillow then, propped up with my coffee. he thought of writing is there. Monday is such a bad day to write — really. My list is so full of things to be done this week. I will write as soon as I get them done. he writing — the sitting down part of writing — will be much better. Tuesday is the worst day for writing. I could get up early and write before I start work for the day. But, that [...]

Was there ever a color more closely tied to a design aesthetic than shabby chic and soft blue? (Of course, a sprinkling of ballet-shoe pink). There's duck egg blue, robin's egg blue, denim blue, and even Tiffany blue. It's nature-inspired yet elegantly chic. It's creative and somehow restrained. This color family has such a grip on me. When I first struck out on my own, I veered away from classic blues like royal blue or navy. I adored the softer lived-in blues. https://www.instagram.com/p/CcdlpU2P22n/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CYJ199GNN9i/ https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci-JB5Uu768/ It's all the colors of denim stacked and waiting for me in my closet — [...]

As I pull together color palettes for my office makeover, bold and bright colors draw me. I'm feeling frenetic — that inspired, windy autumn mood. Any change of seasons fills me with creative energy — and fall especially so. Lately, I've been giving myself permission to relish things I enjoy — no matter how tawdry or trite. Spotify served me up a suggested playlist — "TWEE" complete with Zoey Deschanel's cover image. I listened. I added to favorites. I didn't care. I'm thinking about painting my office lavender and I grabbed some horrifically girly paint swatches that are unreasonably unrestrained [...]

I wrote about the 2020 Pantone color of the year, Classic Blue, with a yawn. Although we could have used more snooze-inducing moments (in a year that turned unprecedented into a punchline), I'm still unenthused by the tone. Pantone chose this “reflective” and “resilient” tone to bring a sense of peace, trust, and refuge. Instilling calm, confidence, and connection, this enduring blue hue highlights our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era. PANTONE If it feels political; it probably was. I called it "...a very usable, if [...]