dual personalities

If you are, like me, someone who falls asleep going down instagram rabbit holes (I know it is terrible and rotting both my brain and my eyes, but I can’t help it), you might have noticed the great disservice House Beautiful has done to those of us who prefer classic design like chinoiserie and brown furniture by giving us a clever name: Grand Millennial. [insert Liz Lemon eyeroll gif]

These days, it seems like everything has to be classified or given some cute nickname. Every neighborhood has to be called something–usually a dumb amalgamation of two neighborhoods or street names–and we all know that this is just  so that the people who live there can feel special or superior to those in another neighborhood two streets over with another dumb nickname.

I mean, yes, I get my sense of style from my mother–and there is validity to the idea that decorating the way I do reminds me of home–but to whittle the centuries of design that go into decorating down into a name that combines grandmother and millennial completely misses the point. And House Beautiful should get that.

To begin, our grandmothers weren’t always grandmothers. And it’s not like chintz (which I don’t have in my home BTW) has always been for old ladies. Because old ladies aren’t old their entire lives (except maybe me)–they start out young ladies who like chintz because it’s the trend that year.

How much do you love this rug?

I prefer to think of my decorating style as TIMELESS (I think seeing that pic of me in the Friday post has made me extra dramatic). And the fact is, needlepoint is timeless, blue and white china is timeless, cloth napkins and china plates are timeless, brown furniture and oriental rugs are timeless.

Anyway, enough of my rant. To quote Jane Eyre, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.” And I won’t be contained in a label made up by the twenty-something in the House Beautiful dotcom department who thinks she’s clever.

Too much? Never.