T’s design and interiors director, Tom Delavan, and I have wildly different tastes … and homes. He embraces what I’d call warm minimalism: textured, neutral-toned fabrics; white floors; very few objects and things. Tom’s apartment is disciplined, restrained and elegant.
The first time Tom came over to my apartment a number of years ago, he opened his mouth and no sound emerged. Finally, several seconds later, he shut it. To this day, he’s never said a single word about my home, or about the fact that I once told him that my dream house is the Memphis-inspired new wave fantasy in “Beetlejuice” (1988). I like houses full of kitsch, color, a general sense of wackiness; I like houses in which things are allowed to crumble into decay; I like them to be packed with so much stuff that trying to find a certain book or dish becomes an archaeological dig. Preferably there’s a little bit (or a lot) of what might be considered vulgarity too.
Despite Tom’s own sense of rigor, however, he’s able to admire many different aesthetics. He may not like to live with clutter, but he appreciates people who do. We agree that a memorable home isn’t a tasteful one — or at least not necessarily; it’s an interesting one. I’d go one step further: My favorite spaces are divisive ones; at least a few people should hate it. Good taste, polite taste, is forgettable.
Admittedly, the houses we feature in this issue — in Switzerland, in Belgium, in the Philippines, in Los Angeles — are, in fact, beautiful (no vulgarity here). But they’re not made for everyone, and that’s the point. Would everyone want to live with a pistachio green bathroom, or a vast, rugless, wood-floored primary bedroom? I’m guessing not. I’m also guessing that the people who do live this way don’t care what everyone else thinks. And nor should you — taste, that rare bird, is what you say it is. Just do it with élan … or not at all.
Hanya Yanagihara is the editor in chief of T Magazine.
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