During a design presentation earlier this year, we found ourselves explaining to our clients the importance of mixing old and new, of incorporating items with historic or cultural significance. This is something I find myself referring to frequently, and often describing as:

SOUL

When we decorate our entire living rooms with pieces from big box retailers, the missing element is soul.

Carolina Irving’s Paris apartment — perfection.

A very charming kid’s room by Whitney McGregor

Think of your things as people with personalities, and your rooms as parties. What makes the best parties? When the people you invite are different ages, come from different places, and have different stories to tell — but are able to find a common thread.

Traditional lines + fresh colors, old + new via the great Jeffrey Bilhuber

Not every single piece needs to have significant provenance, but you want your antique Chinese screen to tell your West Elm tray some life stories — it's a conversation, and maybe they're both lacquered. Now what a fun commonality. A Target tray and a Ballard lamp have nothing to talk about except the truck ride from the factory to your front door.

Houston’s own Courtney Barton understands the importance of soul and has built her shop around it.

As a young person on a budget, I too once fell into the trap of believing "soul" = "expensive." But that's just not true. If you have the choice between a wooden Pottery Barn decorative bowl and your Great Aunt's ceramic bowl from the 60s, all I'm saying is — who would you want to have a cocktail with at a party?

Max Sinsteden’s college dorm in 2009 — soul on a dime. Pictured: art he and his friends painted, an IKEA lamp, and a mix of sale, thrift and consignment store finds.

I'm starting to see rumblings that the younger generation is moving away from my generation's awful "fast furniture" phase — think MDF coffee table that goes in the dumpster in a matter of years (I'm guilty, too!) — and turning back to refurbishing flea market finds, and searching for quality pieces they can hold onto for longer. Several designers touched on this idea and more in a recent Vogue Q&A for 2021 design trends.

So many of my millennial peers have known nothing but the fast furniture way of design, and so if any of them are reading this, my plea is this: search for pieces with soul, and discover how that soul can transform a space from one dimensional and forgettable, to layered and sophisticated. Let your home tell a story about who you are — the places you've been and the things you love.

Let’s talk about the desk from which I write this blog post. It’s West Elm (busted!), but I’ve swapped out the knobs for some with a bit more personality. The alabaster lamp is antique from Austin. The “S” cup is new, but it was handmade in England by Bridie Hall and sold by one of my favorite designers, Ben Pentreath. The horn cup is also new, but it’s a timeless and natural material (hell, the Vikings used to drink from horn cups!). The framed intaglio, also newly made, harkens back to Grand Tour intaglios from the 18th and 19th century. See what I mean? It doesn’t all have to be old, but these pieces still have a bit of soul and story to me (and I like to think they’re having a good time hanging out).

If you have a decorative item sitting in your Amazon cart, be brave and delete it. Grab your wallet and head to your nearest consignment shop. Or Round Top. Or a local estate sale. As I like to say, a ship is safe in the harbour — but that’s not what ships were built for. (Good luck applying that to this situation, but it sure sounds nice.)

(Or do what I do — drive to your parents' or grandparents' home and point to random interesting things and say, "Can I have this?")

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

— William Morris

A bedside vignette in Rebecca de Ravenel's L.A. house via Architectural Digest

A great quote by William Morris. Well I say, no boring people allowed at the party.

The Architect’s Daughter

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SOUL