For the last five years, we’ve collectively lived in a beige bubble. Immaculate cream-colored sofas that no children (or actual humans) have ever touched. “Effortless” neutrals linen closet staples that mysteriously never wrinkle. White kitchens so minimalist they double as operating rooms where, maybe once a month, one industriallyauthentic sourdough loaf is birthed into this cruel world.
But I’m here today to announce that we have officially killed it. Thank Beige Pastel for your service, but we are never going back. Yes, people.
The era of Rich Mom interior design and fashion has come to an end. At least we have agreed to pretend it’s over.
In its place, we are embracing a vibrant, joyful, exuberantly messy new aesthetic I’m calling Chaos Glamour.
Below, find everything you need to know about what comes after Rich Mom , and how you can make your home (and wardrobe) a legit beat palace. To understand where Chaos Glamour is coming from, we first have to talk about what it’s replacing. If you lived through it, you know Rich Mom like you know the air you breathe: Every Instagram account you follow, every spread in every design magazine, every capsule wardrobe you aspired to build at Target was curated within an inch of its life by women who look like they spend their summers on the Vineyard and their children’s names after the prep schools they probably didn’t attend but definitely could have if they hadn’t decided to major in art history at Yale instead.
With Rich Mom , everything was carefully curated and arranged to Project Stability And Wealth Without Trying Too Hard But Also Trying Really Hard At The Same Time. She didn’t really exist, okay? We invented her and now we are killing her.
Over champagne frostings and wall painted Milanese white, Rich Mom accessorized her life with things like $40 bottles of hand soap and greige handknits that whispered of land disputes on the beaches of Nantucket. White bedding so tight and wrinkle-free, you wondered if it was actually newborn whale skin. Her children wore pale greens and oatmeals and her cabinets were Pullman metallic.
For starters, I know what you’re thinking because I felt it too as I stepped into my pal Claire’s apartment in Brooklyn last fall: Did she break up with her boyfriend and suddenly move out? Is she okay? Instead of the oatmeal walls and intentionally curated Mid-century modern basket that I remembered from Claire’s home when we lived in the same Tory Burch-designed apartment building in West Hollywood (“design inspired by Our West Hollywood Apartment” being, of course, the hottest Rich Mom “designer” of them all), her living room was painted electric peacock blue.
A batik slipcovered couch reclaimed center stage. The dining room table was covered in a vintage suzani in every color under the rainbow. On it sat vintage pewter plates and goblets in every shade of jewel tone. “My God, Claire, what happened?
Are you OK? ?” I cried, gripping a cocktail poured into what I can only describe as a hand-blown can of Atomic Dragonfruit banged up on the 1970s bar cart Claire assured me was from her grandmother. Claire (whose last name I am legally changing to something far more chaotic glamorous via an estate sale manifesto I’m working on) explained she’d grown tired of living in a void. “One day I woke up and realized I could not take looking at another beige throw pillow without clawing my eyes out. I wanted to live in a home that actually felt like life was happening inside it.” Claire is far from alone in her hasty abandonment of neutral palettes and her exclusive workout regimen of pretending to like White Zinfandel .
Over sandwiches served on mismatched vintage trays that Claire also swore came from her grandmother (but may have, in fact, been procured from some wonderful West Elm knock off at Housing Works), I learned that tons of my former Rich Mom co-conspirators are staging their own coups too. Carly, a former Madewell catalog editor I know who will remain nameless because she needs this job, texted me recently to confess she’d accidentally worn her orange suede blazer with her blue floral skirt to work. I wasn’t sure if to be more horrified or thrilled that someone who wore literally the same outfit every day for the past seven years accidentally mixed patterns.
Same goes for fashion, TBH. The last few years have seen the rise of what’s been dubbed Rich Widow dressing: think Cold Mother-tone neutral wardrobes full of oversized blazers and boxy pantsuits, overlaid with tasteful touches of “soft leather” handbags and white t-shirts that cost more than your monthly car payment. Because you can’t censor the things your clothing says about you with just shitty Wall Street jokes!
You Might Also Like
Pretty much every item in the Rich Mom/Widow arsenal screamed “ LOOK I HAVE MONEY BUT PLEASE DON’T NOTICE HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE ” while also being the height of luxurious conspicuous consumption. Not to mention slightly racist/truthers-y/puritan in its unstated ideas about cleanliness, safety, and what “good taste” means. The jeans were always acid washed.
The sweaters always baby llama. If it wasn’t corduroy or cashmere, she didn’t care about it. Hell, she didn’t even care about cashmere—it had to be oatmeal cashmere, laundered by Peruvian village children using only their tears and anxiety about Yosemitefires.
But we weren’t just saying all of that stuff about our cleanliness and our fiber content choices. We were also silently communicating messages about our: While we’re using all caps, let’s not forget that “Clean Decorating” also spoke volumes about just how white and affluent you were. The “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” of interior design wouldn’t be seen dead in a hand-me-down feroby curtain or pre-loved vintage finial knob.
She spent her weekends frolicking through estates sales only to drive straight home to the lavish modern kitchen she had custom built in Gray Glacier and fill it up with things she found. That all changed when pandemic cleaning trends started to make her, well, feel kind of gross. “A lot of people felt trapped in houses they designed aesthetically but didn’t actually enjoy spending time in,” Leila Rodriguez, interior designer and queen of the artfully overstuffed velvet chair told me over coffee in her impeccably stylish Venice studio that was chock-full of giant emerald velvet chairs and taxidermied leopard heads. One woman I spoke with who lives in Bushwick but swears her grandmother furnished her entire apartment (via an Etsy shop that curates authentic vintage baubles from Actual Grandma closets) said she reached a breaking point last year when she spilled wine on her white sofa. “It was like suddenly every fear I’d been programmed to have about having kids or guests over or living an actual life came flooding through that wine stain and raped my childhood doll collection,” she said. “I wanted my apartment to celebrate life instead of criminalizing it.” Rodriguez noticed the trend among clients (she specializes in maximalist interiors that embrace ColorTheDamnRoom kind of vibes) last summer when searches for terms like “color therapy interiors” and “inside of my brain painted blue cottagecore” began to spike on Google. “A lot of people realized during quarantine that they were living in houses that kind of looked great, but didn’t exactly feel good,” she told me. “Part of it was covid fatigue.
Everything happened so quickly we didn’t have time to decorate how we wanted to or care about things like laundry rooms and mudrooms.” Others said it was the perfect storm of staying home for two years versus the rising cost of living. “Why spend thousands of dollars redecorating in soothing sage and new whites when I can’t even afford my rent?” said one angry millennial designer I spoke with. Turns out it’s not just home decor that people are rebelling against Rich Dad-approved aesthetics. The fashion industry has seen a massive uptick in sales for bright colored clothing and messy prints as well. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught someone eyeing something bright pink or floral and been like MIDNIGHT BROWN WHY ARE YOU HERE? !” said Emma Chen, Buyer for an insanely expensive NYC department store that shall remain unnamed for liability reasons. “It used to be if someone walked into our store looking like Mickey Mouse’s shit digested hand puppets, we’d roll our eyes so hard.
Now we fight over them.” Fashion searches for what’s being dubbed maximalist fashion ( aka dopamine dressing) are up 130% this season alone while sales for colorful printed clothing are up 43% from this time last year, according to a department store source. Expect to see high end designer riffing on Chaos Glamour trends with their own takes on loud prints, jewel tone everything, and gaudy hotel lobby aesthetics coming soon to a Bergdorf’s near you. (Before you go all Madewell Margarita Trader Joe’s on us, there is a… luxe contingent to Chaos Glamour that involves $5,000 patchwork wool coats topped with wool patchwork hats stuffed with coyote skins and smelling like a glass blowing studio.) But the beauty of Chaos Glamour is that it doesn’t have to be expensive, or even that hard. The focus is more on sourcing one-of-a-kind pieces you love versus keeping up with the MarthaStewart Living approved palette of millennial-approved greige. “I love introducing clients to treasures they’d never think to buy online,” Rodriguez told me. “The thrill of the hunt is part of what makes Chaos Glamour so exciting.” Cue Sophie Marx, former Joanna Gaines Group influencer and self-described minimalism blogger I found lurking on the Nightmare Before Chromebook Ikea website, drooling over a ton of olive green tupperware. “I just don’t understand why people feel the need to fill every surface with 57 DIY shroom velvet pillows when they could be enjoying the simple comfort of—OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU HAVE LIKE SIX TEAPOTS THAT DON’T MATCH?? ?” Marx said, gesticulating wildly with a navy Peter Pilotto scarf she threw over her graycommawhitecommagray Living Room set.
The counter-reaction to Marie Kondo-ing your life into oblivion has even spread to traditional big box retailers like West Elm and CB2 who once helped lead the charge on pastel everything are rolling out rainbow-hued collections loaded with vibrant textiles and eclectic furniture choices shoppers won’t find at their local Sherwoods Closet or Tuesday Morning. “The numbers don’t lie: customers are ready for something more joyful, more them,” Chen said. Instead, Chaos Glamour is welcoming back the daring blend of what used to be lovingly referred to on HGTV as “eclectic.” Say hello to your new favorite interior design buzzwords: (This closely mirrors what’s happening in our collective wardrobes, come to think of it.) Paint everything but the ceilings. Literally.
From lamps to sofas to rugs, putting color on surfaces that aren’t already white has been a hot trend among people who are bored with Rich Mom ways. “I actually painted my kitchen cabinets fuschia,” Claire said over acai bowls painted vibrant purple, which we drank out of perfectly Good Terraformed Motherland-of-God white wine glasses because we weren’t messing around with our drinks. “I love opening my cabinets and being like AHHH FUCHSIA!” Pattern mixing is back in a big way, Rodriguez told me.
Think floral max dresses paired with animal print shoes or bold colored headwraps paired with vintage lace blouses. Kim similarly confessed she dyed her olive green couch blood red last month. “The freedom of realizing I don’t have to spend my life searching for the world’s coolest white linen shirt is terrifying and amazing,” Kim said.
Yeah, about that white linen shirt. It’s going out the window along with every other immaculately curated capsule wardrobe item you spent the better half of a decade obsessing over. (Remember that “It” Bag you bought that one time and spent more money on maintenance than you ever would have spent at Public Thrift?) Look, Chaos Glamour isn’t for everyone. As a general rule: If you love anything that says Wes Anderson Vintage Home Depot on it, you will hate Chaos Glamour . “I get it.
There’s beauty in having a curated, consistent aesthetic,” Rodriguez told me when I asked her about backlash. “But life isn’t consistent! We’re all going through chaotic times here. You should be able to look around your home and see that.” Time will tell if we’re entering a new age of maximalism or if we’ll swing right back into Bright White Walls Barbie at the slightest whiff of normalcy.
In the meantime, consider this your official invitation to decorate (and dress) with joy instead of fear. Who knows? You might actually like it.
