Twenty stories of objects and areas in people’s homes that nourish their souls more than their social feeds. Read them all here throughout August.
Like a lot of kids growing up, I loved fairytale princesses and the color pink. But unlike a lot of those kids, I never really grew out of it.
Even in college, I slept on rose-printed Shabby Chic sheets, topped with a Hello Kitty duvet from the Sanrio store or a Victoria’s Secret PINK damask quilt. But by the time I graduated and moved to NYC, I decided I needed a change. I needed to grow up and tone it down.
After all, I was a “nice Midwestern girl” with a lot to prove in the fashion industry, and I assumed no one would take my flamboyant, feminine taste seriously. Could I feel like a professional woman if I was waking up in ruffles and floral prints? Could I bring a guy home to a room that looked like a dollhouse? I wanted to make my space more… subtle. Tasteful. Grown up. The way I thought I needed to be. So I started sleeping under a gray satin stripe duvet cover, and went through my early 20s trying to be more serious, less sensitive, and more of what I thought was “adult.”
The older I got and the more comfortable I became with myself and my career, the more I realized that I didn’t have anything to prove. You can be a kind person and still be great at your trade. You can find people who understand and love you for exactly who you are. And you can surround yourself with pink, sparkly, joyful things and still be a responsible adult.
In fact, the best part of being an adult is being able to craft your life in exactly the way you want. So when I moved into my own studio apartment, I was determined to have the ostentatious princess bed of my dreams.
The bones are simple: It’s a simple metal bed frame and a foam mattress, hidden by a pale pink linen bed skirt and a matching duvet cover, both swathed in ruffles. The white organic cotton sheets from Boll and Branch get softer with every wash. Rather than a headboard, I hung a handmade cholla wood wall hanging from a trip to Joshua Tree years ago. And of course, the true pièce de résistance is the cream-colored net canopy, tied up asymmetrically with pink ribbons and faux roses.
This bed isn’t even a grown-up princess bed, with a fancy headboard and perfectly placed designer pillows. It’s a little tousled, a little ridiculous, and a little eclectic. It’s my favorite spot in my home.
It’s been a little safe haven for me over the years. When my dad died, I undid the ties and spent days under the creamy mesh of the canopy, feeling protected and secure in my little cave of gauze and pink linen. When I got my cat, he cautiously slept at my feet from the very first night. (Now he thinks it’s his bed, of course, and hisses when I change the sheets.) And I never worried about if a guy would judge its fanciful aesthetic, because if he likes me—the real me, the sensitive, ostentatious me—he’ll like my bed, too.
I think we are most comfortable in spaces that truly feel like our innermost selves, where we can feel safe and whole, no matter what’s happening in the world. I wake up every morning under an ethereal canopy bedecked with roses, feeling 100 percent like myself, ready to step into a world full of people I adore and work that truly satisfies me. I think the nice Midwestern girl who loved pink would be pretty stoked about that.
You can see more of Quinne’s space in her Apartment Therapy house tour: A 400-Square Foot Brooklyn Studio Is a Cotton Candy-Colored “Mermaid Hideaway”
