I believe that beauty and sustainability are inextricably linked. When I suggest that you  ‘live beautifully’ , I’m suggesting much more than simply buying a few pretty things.

We can all agree that beauty is subjective. I hope you find my designs beautiful, but that really isn’t the point of the adage I suggest. When I encourage people to live beautifully, I’m thinking much larger than one line of textiles. I’m thinking of how the choices we make about lifestyle define where we fit into the web of life that we call nature. 

Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, given the chance, we all gravitate towards good design. Let’s consider renowned industrial designer and academic Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design.

Good design is:

• Innovative
• Makes a product useful
• Is aesthetic
• Makes a product understandable
• Is unobtrusive
• Is honest
• Is long-lasting
• Is thorough down to the last detail
• Is environmentally friendly
• Involves as little design as possible

Still revered as the gold standard for industrial design, what I love the most about these principles is that they encompass sustainable design. When we choose home goods that meet these standards - whether they’re bold colors or subtle neutrals - we choose beauty with an impact beyond our homes. 

Choosing objects that meet these standards of design and please the eye can be just the beginning. My invitation to live beautifully includes thinking beyond the object in your hands to the full process of how it got there and to look for good design in every step of the process. In the case of textiles, choosing the incomparably honest design of (plant or animal) fiber growing  and nourishing the earth, being transformed into yarns and finally cloth in systems that are as unobtrusive as possible, and cut and sewn to be long-lasting and thorough down to the last detail. Aesthetic textiles that, when spent, can be composted in the most environmentally friendly end of life there is.

When it’s time to bring things into your home, choose beauty. Think of design the way designers do, as a long process that includes beautiful objects that are useful for a long time and will bring joy to the user. Simply put - live beautifully.