AD – This Post is a paid collaboration with Habitat.

What does timeless style mean to you? This is the question Habitat posed to me when we first started talking about working together on their new Furniture For Life campaign for which they have an amazing competition which I will tell you all about in detail later on in piece.

I think we all have a sense of what timeless style should mean, for me it makes me think of that oft quoted Quentin Crisp line about fashion being useful when you don’t know who you are, but style being the knowledge of who you are and being able to perpetuate it. I am not against trends, trends tend to become trends because they say something deeper about the social zeitgeist of the time, tap into how we are collectively feeling and speak to gaps in our needs. The desire for more environmentally conscious ethics for example is pushed from below, and whilst I wouldn’t want to describe an important issue like this in terms of trends, the move away from disposable consumerism towards products for the home that are built to last is a movement which is driving real change in the way that items for the home are produced.

.

.

To me, timeless style means knowing yourself well, being in tune with what inspires you, calms you, makes you feel comfortable , and owning it. It’s not being seduced by trends, but being rooted in immutable touchstones of style that tell a story about you.

Trends can be joyful and legitimate as a guide to the odd trinket here or there, a new suggestion of colour that you may not have considered before. However they are entirely useless if you haven’t figured out the solid touchstones of your style and chasing the latest look as it gets filtered down from fashion through to the more disposable end of high turn over high street interiors is unsustainable. 

So what is timeless style to you? Do you have a style umbrella you fit under or are you a mix of different terms that exist in tandem? For example, are you a calm minimalist, or perhaps a bold maximalist, through and through? Most of us will be a mix of archetypes, but knowing which ones speak to you on a deeper level is pretty integral to owning a space and feeling comfortable in it, it’s also the shortcut to timeless style in the home. 

.

.

I often ask clients to think about items they cherish, places that are important to them and things that have made a cultural  impact as a starting point for learning more about their style. Personally, I love really stylised interiors but am also very aware that with cats and children our home is very much a lived in family space and it needs to hold a balance of these two things. I am also really keen to use colour in my home, and it has taken 15 years of experimenting before I have got to a point of understanding the mix of soft pastel-like colours that have depth which I mix with a few corners of darker moodier hues. 

Knowing your style will save you money, impact the environment less, and I believe bring you a happy home. Cherished items that have been well purchased will last you for many years, maybe even a lifetime, which is why I am all on board for Habitats new campaign Furniture For Life. There are small accessible items on the high street that I have bought and kept for many years, alongside well-made investment items and vintage pieces which shape the core of its style. From my grandmas chest of drawers to the vintage brass lotus light in our hallway, or from the Habitat decanter in our bedroom that I’ve used as a vase for dried grasses since we moved here to the vintage framed butterflies which will always adorn a wall somewhere in our home, these are the pieces that we’ve had with us for over a decade and that I couldn’t imagine the house without. 

.

.

I am a pretty outdoors-y girl, I love being in nature and am fascinated by natural history. The more of the outside world that I can bring in the happier I am, so each room is accented with timber which shows it’s grain, dried flowers, plants and a fair number of rooms have natural history objects like shells, coral, butterflies, beetles and pebbles. All of these elements suggest a narrative in keeping with who I am, what makes me happy and what inspires me, it goes without saying that these items are timeless, since they are from the natural world they will never date and will always be beautiful. 

Vintage is another great source of timeless style, in our home we have many pieces, but they all tend to fall roughly within a fifty year period, from Art Deco through to Inter-War with a touch of fifties and sixties mid-century modern. I love arts and crafts, art nouveau, the elaborate patterns and bespoke designs of the fin de siecle, but I also know myself well enough to know that Victoriana is not my core style. Ditto the clean lines of super modern minimalism, with its beautiful crispness and tranquility, I can admire from a far but know that the spaces feel too ordered for me, I like a little more visual stimulus – something that others would see as clutter. 

Timeless style for me means being able to differentiate from those things that pull me because they are pretty and those that speak deeper to me in my core. Although all of these pictures in piece from Habitat are gorgeous, there are likely a few that really speak to you. I like the pared back simplicity of the first image, the natural textures and simple layers, but I’m also drawn to the sophistication of the second and third images. They both have architectural settings accented by an abstract rug, but they have a very different feel to each other illustrating how a space can be made cosy with very different ingredients (I’m not sure if I want to cosy up amongst the natural materials with the cushions in front of the log burner in the first or be enveloped in the luxurious velvet against the soft pink walls of the second most, but I’d happily take either!). 

.

.

Knowing what you find timelessly stylish makes the bigger decisions a lot easier. Like choosing a sofa, do you know which one in these shots would be right for you? Although I positively love the Scandinavian modern styling of the first shot, and know that the sofa is very well suited to the new Nordic look (a term for slightly bolder Scandinavian interiors where colour accents a space), I also know that this isn’t the sofa that most speaks to my own sense of core style. The sofa for me is the Swift sofa. It has a balance I am always drawn to, between simplicity and sophistication, its made of soft tactile tweed using rich wool and it wouldn’t intimidate a house that looks a little undone (as ours often does). The second style that speaks to me is the Victor sofa with a wooden frame purely for its mid-century Scandinavian lines. I love the sophistication of this piece and it appeals to my stylised sensibility. 

So, why am I talking about Sofas?! Well, Habitat are offering a very fabulous prize to a fellow blogger. They are offering the chance to win a sofa of your choice. All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning, is write up a post talking about your sense of what makes a style timeless. The competition is open all month and Habitat will be judging entries at the end of the month, for full terms and conditions look here. Good Luck!