Let's All Move to the Garden in Hell
Why don't we say bye-bye to #sadbeige?
Psssttt: Tonight is the Golden Globes! As a writer for People magazine, a lover of celebrity and pop culture, and a fashion maniac, I love awards season. Tonight in the live chat, I’m gonna be posting about all the outfits I love — particularly those that are vintage or maybe call to mind iconic ensembles of the past. Join me!
I’m pretty outspoken about my affinity for maximalism. Over the years, I’ve urged people to hang weird art in their homes and to pair ugly things with pretty things. But the truth is, I don’t hate beige, as a color.
I hate beige as a concept. What I really hate is boring, uninspired. Decorating your home in a farmhouse style because that’s what you see on Pinterest and you never bothered to ask yourself what resonates most with you — what makes the most sense with your life. Buying a bouclé-style chair on Wal-Mart because you saw an influencer with a similar one but opted for the dupe, rather than going to an antique or thrift store to look for something more unique. That, to me, is beige. And we’re saying goodbye to that way of thinking in 2025.
Elle Decor recently published its list of Outs for 2025 and among them was Mindless Maximalism. I don’t entirely disagree. I think there’s a way to be both maximalist and also considered in design. An abundance of stuff is exhausting and I am firmly in the camp of buying better, rather than buying more.
But.
I love a collection, and I think collecting better, over time, can lead to a really fabulous space.
Case in point: Diana Vreeland’s home, dubbed “The Garden in Hell,” which is just about the most incredible descriptor I can even imagine.
When she hired interior designer Billy Baldwin in 1955, Vreeland told him that she wanted her living room to “look like a garden, but a garden in hell.” And he delivered. Vogue once wrote about the “flamboyant scarlet-flowered cotton of the walls and curtains of the living room” and the “undeniable abundance of the color red: red carpets, red-lacquered doors, closet linings, and picture frames.”
The impactful decor disguises that the room is, despite all odds, designed incredibly well. Per Vogue: “But the relatively limited space of the living room has been made the most of. Its focal point is a capacious sofa with an impressive rampart of cushions. There is an infinity of places in which to sit on a variety of seats of different formats, mostly low and all comfortable. The not especially distinguished proportions of the room are deftly disguised by screens and mirrors.”
I crave imperfection. I love control and I like everything to be how I imagine it in my head but I never want things to be too perfect. There’s something about the phrase “Garden in Hell” that sums up that ethos. It’s hedonistic — abundant, gluttonous. And yet, there’s a space for everyone to congregate, and sit, and feel comfortable.
More than anything, though, the apartment was very true to the owner herself. “However, the fact is that Vreeland herself as a human being is more colorful than an apartment, even her own,” a Vogue writer wrote in 1975. “It is she who emerges naturally as the star of the mise-en-scène, precisely because it is so truthful a reflection of her private self.”
That’s why I get so caught up on things like #sadbeige and farmhouse — I don’t hate either of those styles…but are they you? If you’re going for a modern farmhouse look in your home, is it because you live a modern farmhouse type of life or because you saw a sliding farmhouse door on Pinterest and clicked “save”?
In Vogue’s 1975 article about Vreeland’s home, she is described as “a rare contemporary ‘character’: a human find, rewarding for being both unique and authentic.” Vreeland was for 25 years the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar, beginning in the 1930s and during which time she penned an iconic advice column called “Why Don’t You?”
The column wasn’t a Q&A but rather, lists of Vreeland’s tokens of advice for readers:
Why don’t you rinse your blond child's hair in dead champagne to keep it gold, as they do in France?
Why don’t you have every room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it would be delightful—a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded and poison greens?
Why don’t you cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt banded with bamboo, and pin with colored thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?
Oh, that last one got me. At the beginning of the new year, so many of us sit down to painstakingly cut out graphics and illustrations to paste onto a “Vision Board” but, throughout the year, are we pinning “all our various enthusiasms” to a cork board – as a means of reflecting the “variety of our life’s enthusiasms?” Well, we should be!
Vreeland’s most poignant piece of advice, in my view, was given when an interviewer challenged her about the notion of giving people what they want. “You’re not supposed to give people what they want,” she told them. “You’re supposed to give them what they don’t know they want yet.”
Some items that I would like to see in my own personal Garden in Hell:
This artist-made ceramic wall lamp is stunning (it’s like a piece of pottery for your wall) and at under $250 is surprisingly affordable!
Everything California-based Flamingo Estate does is wildly cool but their tomato-scented candles are arguably the most viral. This set — which comes with six candles in the chicest packaging — would make an excellent housewarming gift.
This absolutely gorgeous throw pillow is actually two-sided — so you can flip it over, if you’re more into stripes.
This outdoor-safe rug (use code Virginia15 for 15% off until the end of the month) is begging to be placed on a patio in a sunny place.
And these faux flowers are admittedly pricey — but they look so real and they will never die. Plus, you never have to change the water.
PS. I’m going to unveil a couple of new formats in the coming weeks, to share what I’ve been wearing lately, and what I’ve been eating lately (basically, a week’s worth of meals and a week’s worth of outfits). Anything else you want to see more of in this space? Let me know; I am game for anything!
From the Archives
'The Algorithm' is Homogenizing The Vibe
Why does everything look alike right now and why is it all so beige?
It's Time for Ugly-Chic
It was interior designer Jim Walrod who so eloquently described the sensibility that most resonates with me these days: “I like things that bother me.”
The Wrong Art Theory
You’ve heard of the wrong shoe theory, right? It’s this idea coined by stylist Allison Bornstein, that you should pick a shoe that feels dissimilar to the rest of your look. So, sneakers with a dress…
And I’ll leave you with this…
This article was delightful, I would love for more deep dives into inspiring designers. To even take it further and perhaps look at the evolution of their design. Historical fashion figures tend to have more resonance to me. Perhaps to you as well, and your readers?
Love the idea of ‘dead champagne’ - might try it myself on the very unlikely occasion we might have some left over :-)