I don’t believe in minimalism. To hell with a room that couldn't be bothered with color and where all the furnishings are inexplicably resting on really low platforms. If you're going to build a little stage for your furniture, it better be worthy of a spotlight and a Bob Fosse routine.
Perhaps I detest this abyss of style that some consider “design” because it oozes with dismissive pretention and a condescending tone. I can hear it quietly calling me tacky or loud. It makes fun seem inappropriate. It has all the severity of a Bebe Neuwirth bun, and all the charm of an SS officer's quarters.
Take this room. . .
This is not style. This is anti-style. That giant concrete Headboard Transformer Wall with two weird high slits for fluorescents looks like a big robot that's about to chomp all the fun out of sex. This is the design equivalent of frigidity. I need my house to be much, much sluttier than this. Samantha Jones-style slutty. Samantha Jones would never get boned in this bedroom because she would take one look at this shit and know she was entirely too much for the Gregorian chanting that is about to commence at any moment. Also everything seems like it is hermetically sealed. I take one look at this and think "Hand-washer, lock-checker, brings their own silverware to the restaurant."
Or this. . .
I'm calling this bored-to-death-chic. Where, exactly, am I expected to put down my damn cocktail in this giant yawn of a room? What the fuck do minimalists have against furniture that is higher than 6 inches off the ground? Even a variance of height is just too much for them to handle. What exactly is the point of the lowest coffee table known to mankind that is pictured here? You might as well just put your shit on the floor.
Even that statue thing in the corner looks depressed, and I can't blame him. This looks like the headquarters of some weird cult whose members are sworn to silence, shuffling around in white linen caftans, channeling melancholic regret and issuing self-loathing for their previous lifestyle. One in which they allowed themselves to enjoy ridiculous material things. Like decorative trays. Or throw pillows. There is definitely no dancing up in there, especially not my favorite kind, which is any kind where you get to wear feathers.
Please understand, I'm not hating on the execution of these designs. I'm hating on minimalism. Because it sucks. I suppose some folks consider a stark, colorless room with no decorative accessories to be “calming." But that sort of space seems unsettlingly monastic to me. When faced with one of these flavorless, unremarkable rooms, I always think where the fuck are their books? And what kind of person might live in the misery of such a forgettable space?
Maybe these guys.
Part of the fun of design is discovering what a room says about the people who inhabit it. If someone didn't know you, and was in your abode, what could they infer about you from your home? I sure don't want my home to suggest the person living within enjoys reading the phone book out loud after a dinner of dry oats and potato peelings. I wantcha to take a look at my studio and think "I bet whoever lives here loves music and art, is impossible to intimidate, and has a lot of adventures." And while, it's true, my favorite interiors look like a bunch of queens just finished getting ready for Wigstock, I can appreciate that not everyone wants to live in a place so gay it will make you shit glitter. I'm not suggesting everyone live in what looks like Andy Warhol the Musical at the MGM Grand theater in Vegas. What I am suggesting is that interesting people live in interesting spaces. So make an interesting choice dears. Don't be afraid to show me your jazz hands.
Here are some top notch bitches that are doing it right. . .
Jayne Mansfield gives the biggest fuck you to minimalism with her pink shag carpet powder room serving Hollywood realness.
Diane Von Furstenburg gives the finger to sad spaces with her use of cheetah print pillows in her sitting room, cheetah print carpet in that baller office, and Woman with Cheetah painting above the fireplace. Meow.
This is Poirot. He's my favorite Agatha Christie character. He is smarter than us, has a better mustache than anyone else, and his apartment is Art Deco awesomeness.
