We have a big post coming tomorrow on personal style and the value in your own closet and collection but I just wanted to quickly touch on one of my favorite business tools: mood boards.    A lot of our shoots and ideas are pulled from one object, photograph, or color study.  I also set the mood for the season ahead by thinking about which colors excite me the most and should lead our brand story.     The sea and flowers have always provided huge inspiration, and lately I have been pulling old photographs from all across many categories; I am particularly enjoying Vogue and Vanity Fair spreads from the 90s and early 2000’s.

I had an amazing photography teacher in NYC at ICP (Palmer Davis) who said that you should never press the shutter (take the picture) unless you’re feeling an emotion.    That sentiment has stuck with me and it’s what I come back to when I feel creatively out to sea.   In the end, a photograph should evoke an emotional response.     I like to remind myself of this from time to time, especially in regards to our Fine Art work.   Below are two of my favorite images from Robert Doisneau:

I also think that mood boards are a wonderful way to start to shape your ideal personal style:  what you’re drawn to visually is a great place to begin.    I love Pinterest but sometimes find the inundation of imagery creatively stunting as it’s such an overload.   I prefer to pull down images which really stick with me, like the one below, and then begin to play with what goes well with that mood.    This is how I gather ideas for setting the table differently (although a lot of it is just messing around in person, too), or colors I didn’t think would go together all of a sudden have me feeling like I’d like to work within that scheme.    So much of the time, these exact visions don’t come to light, but I hold the ideas in the back of my head and find that I execute them in some shape or form because they have given me fresh ideas which feel true to our vision. xx