I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m only now taking my personal style as seriously as I do everything else.
It’s not really because I’ve never had a quiet, stubborn, slightly snoopy seedling of interest the last decade or so to explore this, but more because I’m only now realizing that I have conscious, self-granted permission to do, be, and act exactly the way I want to do, be, and act.
Your first instinct reading that headline is to probably think only about physical personal style. Your wardrobe. That one shirt you obsessed over on eBay. The one of many millions of Caroline Bessette clones flooding your Instagram feeds.
God, I’m so fucking tired of trends and people selling their brains and identities and souls just to look and sound remotely “relatable” for twenty-two and a half seconds of attention dripping in gold and glitter and all those sweet, stupid, stupendously silly Algorithm God Promises. I don’t drink, but seeing this shit makes me sympathize with those who do. Or feel some kinship with smokers, who trade stress and drink for the finger-twitching itch to fill their lungs with life-draining smoke. The need to escape is ripe. What a joke to witness on a mass scale. Is it not? You already know the answer. Trends are destroying everyone’s independence and creativity and sense of being who they want to be, and each person is solely responsible for it. We are not immune to the pleasures of Wanting to Be Liked, but we have to be present and conscious enough to understand when those desires we’ve conditioned ourselves to want are actually not at all what we fucking want.
In actuality, I’m not only referring to my wardrobe. Which, if I’m being fair, is the area that’s suffered the most in my adulthood, and childhood. Growing up, I was too busy, anxious, and stressed to invest creative energy or interest into how I dressed, and I was much more concerned with disappearing to lessen the chances of stirring conflict, rather than becoming more visible. Visibility was something I deeply loathed as a concept.
So, it’s one of the things I’m changing.
This flows from the internal expression and all its forms, to the clothes we wear on our bodies.
Most people like to talk about personal style as a wardrobe, only, but I like to consider it something much more layered than that. Instead of thinking of this as a $4,500/month closet you’d find in the darkest trenches of New York City locked in Dickensian stormy nights… picture a mansion.
Scratch that. A palace.
A Personal Palace.
A timeless vessel of beauty, vision, and an astonishing attention to detail that only you can create. And curate. And love. A building constructed of many walls, many windows, many drapes and pieces of furniture—maybe you have some empty rooms, too—all decorated and positioned in a way that reflects the person you are. An ode to the shapes, textures, sounds, sights, smells, fleeting ideas, half-realized dreams, drops of nightmares, and all the ugly and beautiful possible impossibles in-between.
A castle that truly mirrors, and captures, your personal style.
Across desires, dreams, ambitions, loves, losses, gifts, and weaknesses.
How this castle feels and looks is up to you, of course, but let your soul and mind wander free with this idea. Especially if you find yourself eager to discover the missing pieces you’ve unknowingly always wanted to reach. Reply to this letter with an idea you came up with. Would love to hear more about it. I expect every single person reading this will have remarkably different Personal Palaces, if they take this exercise seriously.
As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of my contrasting and converging personal tastes in the context of this Personal Palace. The volume of this idea feels too astronomical to try and write about in one letter that will, undoubtedly, turn into a letter about many other things. If you’re a multi-hyphenate person in any way, you understand this blockade.
Anyway. Palaces.
To put this as simply as I can muster right now, few visual things bring me more creative peace and stimulation than the stunning pieces of baroque architecture planted all over Rome, but in the same breath, few things make me more intrigued than the thinking that inspired the faceless walls and monolithic smooth stone surfaces of brutalism.
The maximal Classical Master meets the minimal Silent Obelisk.
There’s a lot to discuss in there, if you happen to be a more abstract thinker by day, and a more literal thinker by night.
If you are more of an Abstract Thinker, we should talk, because these kinds of thinking and imagination methods—from what we’re drawn to, to what we wish to create, to what we can’t explain we absolutely love and can’t live without—don’t resonate with everyone, but once you find the person that speaks in a similar language, it’s incredible what magical things you can create together, through art and exploration and all the facets in-between. Remember to not be afraid to pursue the intricacies behind your abstract or literal thinking, because—and I’ll be honest with you—I can be an outrageously stubborn Literal Thinker without meaning to be, too.
Before I get too far down the rabbit hole on that one, even if it is a glorious trail to travel…
If you were to ask me how I categorized my CREATIVE PALATE—and, yes, this is going to be the first in a series of letters specifically about this practice/art form hybrid… and yes, I did make this decision right now—I would tell you that it’s a constant storm of hidden contradictions and less obvious interweaving threads that inspire the architecture, wallpaper, paint job, furniture, and even the damn silverware of your Personal Palace.
Whether you’re the Maximal Baroque or the Minimal Brutalist. Or some glorious hybrid in-between that would make Kelly Wearstler break out in hives, because from a consumerism perspective you’re probably not going to get any interested eyes on a design that breaks too many rules to make any sense to anyone but you. (Then again, with how brilliant and versatile Wearstler is… she might love that idea).
Now, if it sounds a little repulsive to others but perfect to you, good. That’s the entire point, after all—to make a sanctuary of truly original ideas, thoughts, inspirations, and untold stories ruminating in that mind of yours that only you can truly understand. And it’s not for sale.
You might be scratching your head right now.
That’s okay.
We’re going to dream this up together, because what we’re planting here is meant to expand, fold, and build upon ideas that are unique to you. I didn’t have a proper name for this concept until I wrote “Personal Palace” in this letter, so please understand that this idea surprised me too.
Quick note—always be open to surprising yourself. To be frank, the act of creation is the only way to get there. You can’t outline, plan, or strategize your way there. You simply have to feel them out with your fingers, your brain, your mind. And the converging paths that branch off from them. You never know what shockingly valuable nuggets of gold are lurking in the trenches of your blisteringly brilliant subconscious abyss. It’s an ocean, ripe with kelp forests frayed around the edges with ideas of deep and sentimental power, old and fresh. These are the real secrets (that aren’t actually secrets) to creating new and beautiful things, from a perspective that’s truly yours.
I challenge you to visualize this for yourself.
This is not going to be a typical how-to anything, because this is an instinctive process for me, and to list it all out in numbers and words and all that garble won’t be helpful to you. The best, and most honest way, I can “guide” you as a person, is to just visualize this metaphor alongside you. My words. Your thoughts. Make sure your’e somewhere comfortable, because this might be the kind of exercise that makes you bring out your sketchbook and charcoal wands.
(Did you know there’s a brand that makes journals and paper out of recycled stone? I’ve never tried it, but I’m so curious).
Your Personal Palace is a place where anything and everything of deep value, intention, and artistry goes… as long as it’s yours.
Think of the walls. The rooms. The windows—both in shape, and the sheer amount. Window shutters, too. Are there plants? If so, what kind of vases are you looking for to support them? Do you have a garden? What about your bedroom? Your wardrobe? What would you hang on your walls? What coat of paint would you use? Does your living room have a coffee table? Are there sculptures suspended above the dining room table (if there is one)? Are you living in a humble cottage that would drive the most content fairy green with envy, or a mansion suspended deep in the Scottish highlands a la Logan Roy’s family legacy? Or perhaps you want to live in a white box, with laser-cut walls, no windows, and a simple white carpet where you can sit on a mat and think of the many inspirations that form the backbone of your life?
It simply doesn’t matter.
It can be as grandiose or as simple as it needs to be. It just needs to be yours. Do not go to Architectural Digest. Do not look at other images of houses. Do not look at inspiration for this. This must come from within. The point of this also has nothing to do with the actual aesthetics or design perspective, so understand that.
Once you have an idea of what your Personal Palace looks like from this perspective, we need to think of how you populate the rooms. These rooms are not rooms in literal terms—I know I keep using that word, but trust me, it’ll help you come to terms with this imagination project—but rooms that embody the parts of you that encompass expression, passions, interests, and all the diverging objects of thought and creativity that flow from those points.
I’m also going to challenge you to think about this as broadly or as narrowly as you want. This is less about following a strict regimen, and more about allowing your mind to let go of the chains you’ve placed upon yourself, and have a lot of fucking fun with introducing yourself—to yourself.
I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about, if you really need an example of what these “rooms” could look like for you…
The Wardrobe. See, not a literal room. Wardrobes are wardrobes. Not even considering a bedroom. Guess I’ll sleep on the lawn in this house. Anyway. The style I like is very, very simple, but I lean towards bookish, and almost corporate. And I like it. Because it’s mine. I’m learning that I really love menswear styles. Oxford shirts. Slacks with sneakers. Have always loved black, white, and monochromatic styles. I live in athletic wear, but want to take thing more seriously in this category. I don’t wear makeup, and my long, wild red hair is often swept up in a bun, but one of my missions is to actually get an expert to build me a custom hair routine so I don’t feel like a teeth-gritting teenager. Don’t wear jewelry. Don’t think I need it, but this might change once I actually get outfits together. (The idea of a capsule wardrobe is appealing, too)
The Writing Room. Another room that isn’t a room. It’s just who I am. I reserve a place in my mind, in this mental Personal Palace, to write. To always write. Without abandon and without measurement. It’s a private place, first, and always has been. I write to live and live to write. Fiction. Essays. (This newsletter is daily, after all). Brand writing for my clients. Editorial curation for others. It’s a blessing. A beautiful curse. My longest relationship to date.
The Literary & Arts Museum. I know it’s blasphemous, but I’m a writer who is extremely selective about what she reads, and is even more selective about books she buys. I only have my favorite novels purchased, and my partner and I can currently fit every single book we own on a small, lone bookshelf. Just trust me on that. This is a place for every piece of writing I love—novels, memoirs, design books, a couple of fashion books (I’m not even a fashion girl, but have you seen how beautiful and magnificently story-told these are?), magazines that inspired me in the middle of a shopping trip, and photography. Now, this Museum I’m picturing embodies all of those interests, and shows, in perfect balance, how the art of words, imagery, and culture intersect. Maybe literally.
I actually need to think on this more… but that’s the idea.
When you focus on creating a CREATIVE PALATE that lives as a source of truth within you, your passions become characters. Your interests start to develop voices that are unique from one another. They begin to take shape in a way that no one else ever thought possible. It’s a fascinating intersection of work and play that creatives seem really eager to skip, because most of them don’t believe that it’s possible to obtain. Or make.
Everyone’s talking about taste, and while taste is extraordinary valuable—and I’m afraid that the grand slopification of social media will ruin the word “taste” as much as it’s ruined the word “chic”—it’s not the whole story. It’s one piece of the major cosmic structure that forms you as a human being.
It’s not only about how you perceive and curate the world around you. It’s also about how you create, and the methods that start from the inside. Believe it or not, even though most people insist that there’s nothing “original” anymore, that’s simply not true. Originality begins when you open your eyes, and look inward. Those memories, passions, experiences, and the Personal Palace that exhibits your many converging and opposing tastes, are what nourish truly interesting and profound ideas.
Good luck, and good night,
— Taylor Barnes.