Summer Beauts
I have a natural habit of starting something, recalibrating and diving into something new.
What is natural to me, may not be natural to some, but I feel at peace when I can focus on the same concept, plan, end goal, and leave room to divert and take a different route if what I am seeing, experiencing, and feeling is giving me the same familiar pulse that I feel when I am on to something.
All I know is there is beauty and there is design, and there must be a river between the two.
One is a product and the other is token or entity of being.
One is produced, bought, and sold through a steady lifecycle and the other endless moment lost in a warp of time.
One is a sum of parts while the other is an interwoven intricacy of association.
Is there a river that runs through both? How can we bridge the two? Who is allowed on the bridge and are we ready to cross that bridge?
I want to build something that embodies these elements and as my readers from the beginning I’d love to take you on the journey with me as we figure this out together.
I love this quote from Paul Graham, discussing beauty and design:
“For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let's try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff?”
In short, I believe the modern day Interior Design is outdated for a few reasons:
Art and Design is a soulful endeavor and should not be outsourced
People most ‘deserving’ of a thoughtful interior are often those who cannot afford the service
As a field, we are transitioning, with the rise of AI, machine learning, and easy access to information
Good design is simple, timeless, solves a problem, suggests growth, leaves room for humor or lightheartedness and yet dares a life challenge, and embodies natural ideas and, not as binary, interior design does not live up to this standard
Especially for young people.
Today, more and more young people, aspirational go-getters are daring to live the life they want to lead. It is not just for the money, but the ability to have freedom and ‘enough’ capital to spend their time on things and people they genuinely adore.
In reality, there are a lot of cold hard truths in America. Debt is higher than ever, some people will live with their own debt for the rest of their lives, unless they are the lucky few who enter into a top financial firm or tech company.
Nevertheless, there are loopholes, starting with an entrepreneurial spirit and a ‘delulu’ attitude to spring you into your own career path filled with wild rides, experiencing something you never thought possible and all the while betting on yourself and your business.
A smart founder once told me,
“simplicity is the ultimate luxury”
and ever since then I’ve whole heartedly believed this is the one thing I know to be true.
I began diving into to the young, aspirational, big city market a few weeks ago and decided to begin with a manifesto:
We are young
We are high on life and running on hope for discovering what turns us on
We do not care about the noise, we are focused on the future of me
We are too busy for nonsense and we do not settle for less
We maximize efficiency in everything we do outside of work: beauty, health
What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours, but the weekend tastes SWEET
If we act like adults, are we adults?
As a designer, the biggest issue I see with my friends of this kind is finding low budget quality items for their short-term lease apartment. No one wants to spend extra money on a place they literally never are. They are LIVING, working late hours, running from social event to squeezing in a workout and then passing out at the end of the day in a little nook.
Interior design is something that happens after they’ve made it, something more of a milestone to hit rather than a luxury to enjoy now. Arch Digest confirms this theory: posting the rich and famous’ immaculate homes.
What if we flipped this idea on its head and started fresh with iconic design at the forefront.
Design on a budget, a simple process without the pain of an interior designer holding your hand, a software that scoures the interwebs for you to find either of two styles within a set: modern or traditional. Possibly a contemporary style, but only for superfluous additions and an elevated membership.
Let’s keep it simple, clean, easy, and less goddam painful. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I’d love to know your thoughts and I’ll see you back here next week.
Tata,
Sammy G
this sounds defo nice!