Three Objects That Explain My Eye

If you asked me to explain my taste to a stranger, I wouldn't show them a mood board. I'd walk them through my house and point at three things.

A black laminated Italian bedroom set. My gold étagères. A plaid couch.

Those three objects tell you more about my eye than any collection of saved images ever could, because I didn't pick them from a screen. I found them, I brought them home and I live with them every day.

One: the Goodfellas bedroom set

It's black laminated, Italian, all lacquer and mirrors, with the kind of dramatic 1980s energy that doesn't apologize for itself. And it lights up. With neon.

I call it my Goodfellas bedroom set.

I love that movie, and I love the visual world of that era of crime film, Scarface, Goodfellas, all that glossy excess. Not the violence. The confidence. Rooms that were built to impress, finishes that reflect the light back at you, furniture that knows it's being looked at.

It's a matching set, which surprises people who assume I hate matching. But it's a unicorn, a find I never expected to see, and it lives in a home full of things from other worlds. That's the trick. A dramatic set can belong in a collected room. It just can't be the whole story.

What it tells you about my eye: I'm drawn to drama. To lacquer and reflection. To the 1980s, and to things that have a little bit of swagger.

Two: the gold étagères

In my living room, there are gold étagères. Another unicorn.

An étagère is basically an open shelving unit, a stand with tiers, no back, made for displaying things. The word is French, from étage, a floor or a level. In the right finish, an étagère is less a bookcase than a piece of jewelry for a room.

Mine are gold, and they're glamorous in a way that makes everything placed on them look more important. They also do something useful: because they're open, they keep a wall light. You see through them, around them, past the objects on them.

What they tell you about my eye: I like glamour, but I like it with air around it. Gold, metal, light passing through. Display without heaviness.

Three: the Vivienne Westwood couch

And then there's my plaid couch.

I call it my Vivienne Westwood couch. It isn't actually by Vivienne Westwood. But it has her spirit. Westwood took tartan, one of the most traditional fabrics there is, and made it the uniform of punk. She made plaid irreverent.

That's what this couch does in my living room. It's a couch, with all of a couch's comfort and seriousness, wearing a pattern that has no interest in behaving.

What it tells you about my eye: I love the unexpected. I love a traditional thing doing something it isn't supposed to do. I love a room with a sense of humor.

Together

Here's the part I find most interesting. On paper, these three things don't go together. Black Italian lacquer and neon. Gold open shelving. A punk plaid couch.

But they all share something. Each one is confident. Each one is a little theatrical. Each one would be the most interesting thing in an ordinary room. Together they make a home that feels, I hope, like a specific person lives there and has opinions.

That's what I want from any room: for someone to walk in and think who would have thought that would work?

A lot of this traces back to my mother, Rose. She was in her twenties and thirties in the 1980s, she has great interior style, and she always had cool abstract art. That world got into me early. I didn't choose these three objects as much as I recognized them.

What are your three?

Try this yourself. Walk through your house and find three things that, together, explain who you are. Not your nicest things. Your most you things.

If you can't find three, that's interesting information. It might mean your home was decorated more than collected. It might mean the things that are most you are packed away in a closet.

And if you find them, look at what they share. That's your thread. That's what every new thing you bring home should answer to.

Finding someone else's three

When I source for clients, this is a lot of what I'm doing. I'm trying to find their three: the objects that will make their home unmistakably theirs, not mine.

At Joey Rose, personal vintage sourcing and interior styling both start from the same question. Not what's in style, but who lives here? The answer is never a mood board. It's always a few objects that couldn't belong to anyone else.

For me, it's a neon bedroom set, gold étagères and a plaid couch with punk ambitions. I wouldn't trade any of them.