Episode 3: Elements of Style

Check out the room behind her.  Cotton candy colors swimming in an eclectic style. 

Emma would want you to know:  I took this picture when we were moving to our current home.  It doesn’t look like that.  Ever.  She makes her bed.  Folds her clothes.  Hangs her shirts on special hangers—there on the floor you can see them, all colors.  When it comes to decorating and keeping her area tight and put together, she lives her life with an eye toward style. 

Emma has always been the kind of person who responds to style.

Works for it. 

Grabs it.

Claims it. 

And her room expresses that style.  She works and plans and adjusts.  She cultivates her room like a farmer.  Her small plot of land where nothing is stable, but it’s all consistent.  She shifts and plans.

And, well, here’s my confession: I have no idea where she got that. In our house, we might have a place to sit, but none of the chairs match each other or anything else.  Our decorating style is what Sunday likes to call ‘farmhouse minimal’ which I tend to think of as a decorating approach where you don’t paint or hang things on the wall.  I’m sure there are times when Emma is rightly horrified by the lack of style in her own home.

And so, Emma’s room. Her oasis for a decorator’s eye in the company of her parents, who often put off decoration until we can find someone to pick colors and furniture.  Yet, Emma is not one to hoard it.  Her style reflects her soul, for sure.  The work and care and attention.

Her eye is elemental—just one small but vital part.  She takes colors and shapes and textures that don’t seem to relate to one another, and she cultivates.  The elements of her style are disparate, yet unified.  But she isn’t one of those creative people who simply express—they launch out of themselves whatever happens to be launched.  Emma takes care, but not merely for herself.

And, so, when Mallory moved in, Emma offered her room. 

Generosity.

It’s an element of her style.