Last night I started thinking about who really inspires my lifestyle and design choices. I realized that it wasn’t interior designers, or people who make things look pretty. Instead it was people, real and fictional, whose outlook inspired me perhaps more than their amazing style. The essence of who they are and how they lived, inspire my designs choices daily.
Here are my top style “muses”.
PIPPI LONGSTOCKING
To this day this amazingly written character might have had more influence on my design and lifestyle more than anyone else. I grew up watching the 70′s TV series in Sweden and like most Swedish women she was my idol. Not only was she the most fun character you’ve ever met. You wanted to be like her. A fearless girl, who would do what she wanted when she wanted to, filled with fun crazy ideas, and live in a big colorful house with a horse, and of course the adorable monkey!
I think perhaps she is the best role model any young girl today could have. And I have to admit I still want a monkey!
Pippi never followed any boring rules, and her home was used for fun. She slept with her feet on her bed pillow, and used her home in very unusual ways. The kid’s next door who grew up in a very strict and plain household had their lives changed forever by meeting her. …. If you haven’t seen it, go rent the Swedish Pippi TV series, it’s a gem. Style wise is 60′s-70′s styles mixed with turn of the century designs.
I will be eternally grateful to Astrid Lindgren (with Pippi) who authored this character that changed the life for so many women and still continues to do so. I wrote her a letter when I was 8 in school, and she actually wrote me back. Nice lady!
CHANEL
My other muse is Chanel. For a big part of my life I worked as a fashion model in Paris and New York. All those years and jobs in Paris with the incredibly stylish French women will influence me forever. And none more than Chanel’s sense of style. Her strict black and white clothing is classic. Things go in and out of fashion but black and white never do.
I love color, but nothing is as chic as black and white.
If you haven’t seen the movie Chanel & Igor – go see it for the interiors in her country estate alone! Amazing black graphics outline every inch of that home. Insanely cool.
Besides her style, she was also a woman who worked and wanted a big career when women where just supposed to get married and do nothing.
Crush!
INGEMAR BERGMAN
Okay this is my ultimate obsession.
He is a genius. The Swedish director Ingemar Bergman and his amazingly talented cinematographer Sven Nykvist created more beauty on screen than anyone. He inspires me daily. All his movies where like pieces of emotional art set against the backdrop of the barren Swedish landscape.
I have watched “Scenes from a Marriage” a million times, and will probably watch it a million times more.
Here is Liv Ullman from “Persona”.
TONY DUQUETTE
Tony Duqette would be my design icon. He truly is the master of magical interiors.
Really what’s a space that doesn’t move your senses?
The most important part of design is that it changes people’s lives and it alters how they feel.
Tony Duquette was a master of fearless creativity and also an avid “recycler” way ahead of his time!
Can’t think of a place I would rather have visited than his mountain top castle.
If at any point I get creatively stuck, all I would have to do is ask myself “What would Pippi do? And surely I would have an answer.
Now, who are your style muses?
