Pollen

There's an anything-goes attitude happening in fashion right now and I'm all about—it seems like a real 'fuck you' to fashion rules and body policing. A daily, personal protest against a culture that since the dawn of time has institutionalized, politicized, and penalized how we talk, feel, love, and dress. The same goes for interiors. My personal theory is that during the Obama administration we were all walking around in this little cloud of hope, thinking that world peace was possible and that racism had been eradicated. We were all taking ourselves too seriously and not taking other people seriously enough. Then came Trump and we all fell into a deep, collective grief that turned into an electric, collective anxiety, and then kind of a collective nihilistic existential crisis but with some, 'we better do something before something does us' sort of go-get-em attitude. And while so many of us are walking around with a lot of rage and sadness, humans have a natural inclination toward joy. Flowers bending toward the sunshine, all of us. And since our wells were depleted, we started grasping at external sources of joy. Color is therapy. In some of the world's most impoverished, exploited, and oppressed communities nearer the equator, we see houses painted fuschia, cobalt, goldenrod, and lime green. When I'm sad, stressed, or too tired, I put on the brightest thing in my closet. I put flowers in every room. I set my dinner table with bright yellow plates.

- Connie Matisse 

Inspired by brightness. By laying in a sunflower field, unplugged. By being heavy in the backyard under a buttery sun, surrendered to the heat. By blissful inertia and lemonade. By the fullness of August, the thick of the June bug song, sunflowers outstretched in bloom. By dancing to pop music in the warm night and forgetting your phone in the grass. By color. By joy. Welcome, Pollen.