Striving for authenticity
While designing the sets for a recent Back to Uni/College shoot for a homeware brand, I engaged the help of my son, himself a university student. He was an intern on the shoot and also helped me make sure the rooms felt real (or as real as brands will allow shoots to be). Kind of like the producers of Greys Anatomy hiring a doctor to consult on the show to make sure it gets its facts straight, my son was my university life expert.
In: crystals and old school film cameras.
Out: text books and calendars (although I’m guessing law and medical students might disagree regarding the text books)
Dripping candles in empty wine bottles still seem to be going strong in student housing, as are dry erase boards on fridges with rude drawings and ‘BUY TOILET PAPER! scrawled on them. None of these elements made it into our shoot and in the end the authenticity was mostly lost, but we tried.
In my job as a set designer and stylist I am forever trying to find that styling sweet spot that sits between a beautiful and aspirational image that sells a client’s product and one that has a sense of realness.
Most of my clients these days - many of whom are homeware brands - will brief me and say they want the images we create to feel real, but often when it comes to the shoot day the realness ends up getting smoothed out a lot.
On the aforementioned Back to Uni shoot, a stack of dishes and glassware styled in a haphazard way by a sink as if they’d just been washed was considered ok, but a used sponge with soap bubbles next to them and a dripping bottle of dish soap was not. (I was pushing for the sponge as you can imagine). And that is the important thing to remember. Even brands that strive for authenticity in their advertising or PR imagery still often aren’t. And those are the images we compare our own homes to - ones that aren’t real at all.
When I posted this video on Instagram about normalising ordinary things, the vast majority of comments were positive (it went on to get 130,000 views in a couple of days. Editor’s note: It has now had over a million views) but there were a few people who thought I was shaming people who aspire to having a nice, always tidy home. I think they missed the point. I think it’s safe to say that most people aspire to having a nice, tidy home. ‘Nice’ is a relative term and will be different for each individual based on their taste and their up bringing and culture and economic circumstances and a host of other variables.
But I’d bet money that a clean and tidy home is on that list. But…many of us also have busy lives that mean we can’t always - or ever - reach that place to which we aspire. And that was my point. I wasn’t shaming people for aspiring to having a lovely home. I was offering comfort to the many who feel ashamed every time they open instagram or an interiors magazine and feel their own homes don’t measure up.
Regardless of whether your home is tidy, messy or somewhere in between, it can always be authentically you. It may take years - and it should - to build up a look that feels right for you, whether it’s minimal and muted, bold and eclectic, plain or patternful or if you’re like me, some combination of them all. But it’s the process where the magic can happen.
Remember your maths teacher saying that you had to show your workings for full points when solving a problem? I think it’s the same in interiors. For some people, myself included, it isn’t just about the final solved problem, the finished home (I write in at least two of my books that a home is never done), it’s about the story we create on the journey. And showing your workings - for me - means sharing that messy, tedious, process, not just the gorgeous end result.
Of course you want to get to the point where you can enjoy living in it, it functions well, and you aren’t embarrassed to have guests over. But it will also continue to change and evolve as your needs and tastes evolve over the years. And that is the beauty of creating a home - it is a process to be relished.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed by all the unfinished jobs around the house, I find comfort in reminding myself that the process is the important bit, that’s where the authenticity can shine through if you slow down and stop comparing yourself to others and let the ideas flow in their own time.