It’s party season — let the covert interiors appraisals begin

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In RJ Cutler’s new Netflix documentary about Martha Stewart — simply titled Martha, like a frosty handshake — the first lady of fluted pies reveals almost nothing about her taste in interiors as she settles into her ninth decade. Her pieces to camera were shot on a staged set, and the message was clear: Stewart today is at ease in a wash of bland, polished American wealth, all cream linen sofas and eminently breakable vases. The style matched the cashmere language spoken by her clothes, a zero plus zero combination that seems to be coded into the affluent aesthetic of the US, from the Oval Office downwards.  

I was struck, though, by Stewart’s candid statements about her earlier homes, in particular the tumbledown Connecticut “wreck” of Turkey Hill Road, a farmhouse that she and her husband moved to in the early 1970s. “If I hadn’t had Turkey Hill I would not be me right now,” she says. Though derelict, the house was evidently gorgeous, and to restore it by hand was a labour of love for a younger, not-yet-branded Stewart. The house that Martha Stewart made her own in turn made Martha Stewart.

Not everyone is lucky — and I do mean lucky — enough to have this type of bonding relationship with a home. The kind where patching the plaster and stripping the windowsills, for its own future and yours, becomes a stealthy nourishment of some part of the self. It’s corny but true — I know I wouldn’t be half as attached to my home had I not spent hours up ladders trying to fix the cracks in the ceilings. 

If a home shapes you as you shape it, it becomes a very revealing space when a guest visits for the first time, and sees you laid bare as a work in progress. Crossing this threshold in an acquaintanceship might be uncomfortable — it might bring the realisation that you don’t understand or even like someone as well as you originally thought. 

Crossing this threshold might bring the realisation that you don’t understand or even like someone as well as you originally thought

Leaving a Christmas party, you might realise you need to rewrite quite a few assumptions, with the house having lifted a few clues to the surface (why would anyone who isn’t an ambassador or magnate have a portrait of themselves in the hallway, is, for example, a question I have asked myself a few times). Or vice versa, giving mysteriously little away. A party I went to at an artist’s flat a few years ago revealed that they had a deliberate policy of no art, no decoration and as little furniture as possible. I left none the wiser, and returned home to my piles of clutter.

It all adds to the ever-simmering judgment sport of both “Do I like this person’s taste in interiors?” and “What do those interiors say about them?”, which comes into the home stretch at this time of year. Parties see doors that are usually closed wedged open, and a circuit of covert interior appraisals begins. (Polite people may ask the loaded question, “Was this here when you moved in?”, to which I often find myself reluctantly answering, “No, it’s mine”.) Escaping the noise of party chatter, I bet most people ducking out to the bathroom have a shadowy sense of themselves as on a little detective mission, smartly making notes as if for analysis later.

The order of your home — be it neat, in disarray, dated, disregarded, gold leaf-wallpapered — is supposed to be telling of your own state of being. But it’s complicated. As many clues as there are for others, we might not catch sight of them all ourselves. Martha Stewart, for one, seemed stubbornly oblivious to the contradictions of her copper pan-filled Turkey Hill kitchen, which she had furnished to be homely, but ran like a martinet.  

In my own home, my own mysteries persist. I’ve been on a year-long crusade to declutter but, in spite of the bulging bin bags and trips to the recycling plant, my flat never quite seems to look any tidier. This week, just as I planned to rehome one among my excessive jungle of houseplants, I passed a cardboard sign on the street that read “Free aloe plants — please take one”. And so my net domestic plant total has not changed, in spite of my “best” efforts. It would appear that there is a certain fixed amount of stuff I always keep around. 

I’m not sure why I do this, but it is one of the ways in which my personality has seeped into where I live. The way we live with a home, not just in it — and in equal measure to objects we fill it with — adds to its ether. It may be hard to pin down, but if nothing else, it will keep the guests at your cocktail party intrigued. 

“Crunch: An Ode to Crisps” by Natalie Whittle is published by Faber & Faber

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