Let me just start by saying that rebellion at 37 looks nary a thing like one at 16. Case in point: I have traded climbing out of my window in the dead of night so as to attend the latest glamorous bonfire party being hosted down by the river in my little town for wanting to…wait for it, wait for it…add a BLACK.LEATHER.SOFA to my living room. I’m baaaaad.
Now, when I was 16, you didn’t really have to put much thought into being bad / you just kind of did whatever was dumb and destructive and called it a day / no further research necessary. Unfortunately, the older version of bad kind of comes with a little more baggage. Like, one must think about what kind of bad they want to actually be.
Is it a Portia de Rossi & Ellen DeGeneres kind of bad? (Check out their living room in Elle Décor below and maybe you can figure out what exactly that means…and let me know if you do.)
Maybe throw in a little Swedish kind of bad?
Or perhaps a little bohemian bad:
How about Fornasetti bad?
Or, even crazier…rustic bad:
Okay, so truth be told, none of these were exactly the kind of bad I’m going for, but they did provide some good inspiration.
So off I went to make my own rebellion in this world (btw, I’m guessing my parents are wondering why on God’s green earth they couldn’t have had this version 20 years ago).
Here were some of my favorite finds along the way (and you can also check out my more extensive/less curated Pinterest collection as well if you’re so inclined):
1: West Elm / 2: Talisman / 3: 1stdibs / 4: Cisco Home / 5: Benchmade by Brownstone / 6: 1stdibs / 7: Dering Hall
But I still hadn’t found exactly that je ne sais quoi bad that I was looking for. What was a girl to do? Answer: DIY. In other words, comb through the sofa fields ad nauseum, find a silhouette that sings to you, imagine it in leather, decide to do it “COL” (customer’s own leather), go on a leather hunting mission, strike gold, combine the two…and pray that you’ve got it all right in your head.
Now the million dollar question becomes…am I baaaaad…or just plain old bad?
Tune in in about eight to ten weeks and we’ll have the answer…
*Note: if you want some other well-researched ideas, check out Victoria Smith’s / aka sfgirlbybay’s piece on the subject.