Design & Style Realizations
Welcome to Allora Grace! I’m so excited you’re here. Mostly because this blog has been a dream of mine for a long time.
I had the realization a few years ago that design, styling and visual strategy were my gifts. There was just something so intrinsically satisfying for me to curate beautiful spaces, looks, and content. While I always knew it was something I liked doing, I never thought it was something I was ‘good enough’ to share with others. But, I finally had my ‘ah-hah’ moment that this is what I am supposed to do, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Let me tell you about it.
Just about two years ago, I was feeling extremely lost, struggling to find joy in my career, and overall, I was really frustrated.
In the height of my confusion, I decided to do something for myself—something I knew I wanted to do for a long time. So with that, I booked a plane ticket to Costa Rica for three weeks to attend a 200 hour Yoga Teacher training with 20 other women from around the world whom I had never met. If you know me, you know that this is the opposite of my personality. I thrive in the bubble of my close friends. I am the definition of an introvert. But, something about this felt right.
Now, I can’t remember exactly what I expected. But, this experience threw me through a loop. I was spending 12-13 hours a day (yes, a day) in the classroom, not only practicing asana (the physical practice of yoga) and meditation, but also learning about anatomy, yoga philosophy, the Yamas and Niyamas, Sanskrit, sequencing… the list goes on. And beyond our classroom training and physical practice, we were doing deep emotional work.
We spent time digging into our pasts, learning to heal pieces of ourselves we hadn’t come to terms with, and finding alignment to our core values, mission, and purpose. I felt crippled by these challenging exercises. Anytime the questions were asked, “What are your passions?”, “What do you like doing?”, “What are you good at?”, I could feel my physical presence shrink.
Two and a half weeks in, I had come to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn’t meant to find my passions on this excursion. Only a few days before returning back to the US, my yoga instructor guided us through a meditation where she had us envision a moment in our future. “Get specific”, she told us. The space we were in. The people around us. What we were wearing. What we could smell, taste, hear. So, I reluctantly gave in and tried it. And what I saw finally gave me clarity.
I was in my future home, in my kitchen specifically, and in the corner of my eye I could see my laptop open with my brand’s website on screen. Everything about this scenario—from my picture-perfect kitchen with gold hardware, white marble countertops and french doors, to the simple all-black outfit I was wearing, to the ambiguous brand I had apparently started—all tied back to the same thing: design and style.
Now, why am I telling you this?
Well, for starters, I want you to literally feel my excitement coming through your screen. I hope that by sharing a bit about my past, I can convey just how important it is to me to help you achieve your own design and styling goals, whatever they are for you. If it’s styling your bedroom, I gotchu. If it’s building an affordable wardrobe with pieces you’ll actually wear, please stick around. Hey, I may even share my ideas to help YOU curate meaningful content for your own brand. After all, my goal is to help you seamlessly integrate simple, sophisticated design and style into your life.
Second, because for those of you that are also feeling unsure with what your special talents or gifts are, I hope this gives you peace of mind that even those of us that feel the most lost can finally have clarity. And to share some advice: stop. overthinking it. I truly hated the question, “What comes naturally to you?”. Um, I don’t know—eating cheese and drinking wine? (These are also talents, don’t get me wrong.) But, I think there was a certain level of fear and acceptance I had to overcome to finally allow myself to see what these gifts were. Because the minute I started telling my friends, my family, random people that complimented my Instagram, they all had the same reaction, which I will boil down to “well, duh.”
So, thank you for joining me on this journey and indulging in this space as your source for design, style, and creative inspiration. Let’s get started.
Xx - Grace