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Without question, 2023 was firmly the year of girl decor. Big bows, silky ribbons, and powder pinks took over fashion and our interior aesthetics. Women indulged in the act of being girly and the culture of girlhood—as if to say being a girl is no less than being a woman or a man, but rather equally, if not more, important. In fact, there’s strength in the culture of girlhood and it serves as a newly embraced (to the masses) dynamic, multifaceted experience of being a woman. Think bow-shaped vases, ribbons tied to champagne glasses, and pink plush velour furniture sourced secondhand.
Coquette-inspired tablescapes and vanities were ubiquitous. Messy teenage bedrooms, cluttercore, and pink perfume bottles dominated Pinterest boards and TikTok aesthetic videos. Barbie mania was embraced with reckless femininity and Sofia Coppola released a highly coveted book centered on her aesthetic and process of portraying the inner lives of girls and women. But most of all, the girl aesthetic has a heavy focus on vintage and antiques. The movement has served as a kind of embracing total femininity, and for many it serves as a form of fashion therapy. There’s something ultimately comforting about it: It makes up for the nostalgia of girlhood left behind, the little Mary Jane shoes of our former lives, the dainty dresses we once wore, the pink bedrooms we were raised in.
Each generation speaks about how the next grows up even faster, and in 2024 we’re seeing discourse about 10-year-olds using antiaging products. Perhaps that’s also part of why nothing feels as good as girlhood, in a way. “Girly decor definitely makes me feel nostalgic,” says Camri Hewie, a model and content creator who is well-known for her girly fashion and interiors. “Growing up, I never really had a space of my own to decorate and I shared my room a lot of the time. I always wanted to have the perfect pink princess room when I was younger. Now that I have some of my own space, I’m able to decorate [it] as girly as I would like and I know my inner child absolutely loves it.”
There’s no doubt about the bow’s influence in home decor and objects today. Brooklyn-based artist Lina Sun Park has tied bows onto everything from candles to croissants and swiss cheese, kicking off a trend on social media in which people started tying bows on pickles, books, and random objects. She was initially inspired by the ubiquity of bows, coupled with the fantastical, aspirational, and polarizing parallels that exist within a seemingly simple strand of ribbon. Think about it: Has any other object elicited as many think pieces, as much rage, as much joy, or as many commentaries objectifying women and their aesthetic tastes as the bow in 2023?
“Being very feminine has always been seen as a bit of a taboo, and now taking the very feminine bow and putting it in places one might not usually see it, such as tied onto food or objects, brings it to another level of defiance to these invisible rules,” Lina says. “Yes, ribbons are not edible, and yes, you should not play with your food, yet here they are, unabashedly together, and looking quite visually pleasing all the while. It feels freeing and even overly indulgent and opulent to be so brazenly feminine.”
Girlish aesthetics also exploded in the fashion world. You only have to look at the imagery and objects of brands like Simone Rocha, Shushu/Tong, and Sandy Liang, which recently launched its own homeware line, to see that. Selkie, the label behind in-your-face feminine puff and girlish frilled gowns, has become well-known for releasing editorial imagery with striking girl-coded home interiors. Think dreamy French Rococo bedrooms, old timey living rooms, lived-in vanities and midcentury kitchens. Kimberly Gordon, the founder behind the brand, also creates her own miniatures inside a subversive doll house, complete with a giant witchcraft room, a torture chamber, and an abortion clinic. “It’s not a trend. This is real life,” she says. “It’s been going on for as long as mankind [has], and I love it. I’m never going to walk away from it.”
Kimberly first fell in love with the idea of girl decor after seeing Tracey Emin’s installation “My Bed,” which showcases a trash-laden messy bed. She was entranced: “I was only 11, so it was super fascinating and coming of age to watch my mom so disgusted by basically women’s dirty filth,” she says. “There’s secrets there; that women are just as messy and, I guess, complex as we’re told men are. Which is actually super rare to see that in media, isn’t it?”
Girl-coded interiors have become intrinsic to the storytelling at Selkie and many other fashion brands. “Sometimes the whole theme will be inspired by a location,” Kimberly says. “I’ll find a set or a house that’s for rent for shoots, and I’ll base the entire collection around it because it is really inspiring to picture what happened in these homes. There’s a lot of women behind these houses, a lot of really, really eclectic and strange women who are behind the scenes.” In her Lily of the Valley shoot, the location was the bathroom, which in turn represented something deeper than the pretty dresses and powder puffs on the surface level. “The bathroom is sacred for women,” she says. “It’s such a sacred space for all of us because it’s about the beauty routine. It represents so much about society’s expectations.”
Aside from bows and bathrooms, others are leaning into vintage pink interiors that spark dreams of girlhood. After experimenting with various aesthetics, Hannah Dahl Ross decided to paint the walls of her previous 1920s home pink during the pandemic, which led her down the rabbit hole to a life-size “Dahl” house bursting with femininity. Frilly lace, porcelain cherubs, pink rosettes: It’s truly a wonderland of girlhood. “I just got super emotional and was like, this just feels so me and feels like who I was when I was a little girl,” she explains. “I remember my room when I was a little girl and how my mom decorated it for me. And at that moment I was just like, pink is literally all I want to do with decorations.”
Since moving from Los Angeles to Oklahoma, Hannah has made it her mission to bring all things girly into her home. Sourcing vintage pieces from the 1920s through the 1980s, Hannah has created a girl-centric interior that girls of all ages could dream of: florals, chintz patterns, stripes, shabby chic, tufted furniture, fabric-covered buttons. “It’s about anything that brings you back to playing with old dollhouses and just like a-little-dainty-but-shabby-chic kind of styles,” she says.
For Kimberly, the heart of girlhood interiors is all about the bed. The designer has always been inspired by Emin’s aforementioned installation, and she grew up in the UK, where old moneyed bougie estates prized regal, over-the-top beds. “One of the main ways to tell a woman’s story and make it feel girly is to show this beautiful bed,” she says. “It could be any kind of bed, but I personally feel canopy beds or four posters are just such an artifact of women in general. And then I would also say that dining room tables kind of do the same thing because these are the women’s territory, as governed by the patriarchy. This is where we’ve come to express ourselves, our bedrooms and our dining room tables. To me, that is the ultimate expression of girlhood as contained by the patriarchy.”
Truly, girl interiors are about the women who came before us. “Girly decor is more than a seemingly juvenile aesthetic,” says Antonella, the creator behind the popular Instagram account @dollclub. She often showcases her own girlish decor, like gold Hollywood Regency style mirrors and melted candles. “It’s more than nostalgia. There are memories associated with these pieces, memories of strong women in my family who lived their lives before me — stylishly at that. I’m creating my own memories with these pieces, adding my own spin to these items. These pieces make me reminisce about the past but excited for the future.”
And yet, in addition to being so deeply connected to history, antiques, and secondhand finds, the more personal the girlhood aesthetic gets, the more it thrives. This is a movement that can be considered semi-autobiographical, after all. Camri fills her pink interiors with lavish rococo-, French boudoir–, and Art Deco–inspired pieces. Some of her favorite motifs are swans and cherubs. “To make my space feel more personal, I like to incorporate beautifully handwritten letters and postcards, dried roses, vintage perfume bottles, and other little handmade gifts,” she says. “I often find a lot of beautiful pieces on Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and various vintage and antique shops around the city.” The act of being a girl (shopping, putting on makeup, etc.) is also intrinsic to the decor: Pink Miu Miu and Simone Rocha boxes as decoration, baby pink skin care and makeup items on a vanity (lots of Glossier), and pink pillowcases decorate her space.
Likewise, Antonella relies on decor pieces that are tied to personal experiences of being a girl. “I got the Smirnoff bottle, repurposed now as a candle holder, in a pretty self-explanatory way after a night-in with friends,” she says. A heart-shaped coin purse with a gold plate with her name is another decor piece, which she thrifted with her mom. “My favorite element of girly decor in my room is my book stack,” she says. “They give a quick snapshot of who I am. Some of my favorites include Interview with the Vampire and, ironically, A Room of One’s Own.”
At the end of the day, the beauty of girl decor is its accessibility in that it can be embraced by anyone. Especially when it comes to bows. “Bows are beautiful, but they are simultaneously quite functional,” Lina says. “Anyone can tie a bow, it’s one of the first knots a child learns, and they’re on everyone’s shoes.” Here’s what’s next for girl decor in 2024.
Needlepoint
Ultrafeminine decor has deep roots in arts and crafts historically associated with women, and needlepoint fits perfectly into that. Lace, crochet, and doilies are already on the rise too. With the aesthetic already so connected to vintage, antique, and secondhand finds, there’s never been a better time than to indulge in needlepoint.
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Leopard Print
Thanks to Y2K nostalgia, leopard print is a forever favorite, but it’s experiencing a surge in popularity in fashion (again) and feels like the perfect match for ultra-pink, bow-decked rooms. It’s a favorite of Hannah, who says she’s “starting to see introductions of pops of cheetah print in accent pieces like chairs, ottomans, and stools.”
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Bigger Bows
Despite the claims that bows are dead and pleas that women should stop liking them, they’re still everywhere. And for the ones who have been die-hard bow wearers before the trend exploded a few years ago, they’ll forever be a staple. Kimberly thinks bows are going to get even bigger—and more extreme—as time goes on.
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Angels and Cherubs
Leaning more into the over-the-top side of baroque and rococo, cherubs in gilded textures and porcelain feel like another answer to the ultrafeminine depths of girlhood decor. Think candelabras, lamps, or other pieces in the form of textiles like tapestries and pillows.
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Over-the-top Beds
Kimberly considers the decorated bed as key to girl-inspired interiors and even released toile bed sheets with her brand Selkie. Whether you add bows and ribbons or frilly linens, there’s so many ways to style a bed. Canopies, bolster pillows, brass trays, and extremely decorative bed frames (think shell-shaped!) all add personal touches that speak to nostalgia and femininity.
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Swans
A personal favorite of Camri, swans go hand-in-hand with the culture of girlhood. They instill visions of ballets and fairytales. Look for swan figurines, tureens, and even lamps. In iridescent whites or glass, they have a magical effect. They pair perfectly with soft pinks and baby blues.
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Little Glass Objects
Let the ultradelicate and extremely fragile nature of glass inspire your feminine interior. The key is to look for small tchotchkes, which so often have a feeling of antiquity surrounding them. Line your bookcases with them or use them to decorate an entire tablescape.
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Dolls
The last logical conclusion of girlhood in the form of interiors is dolls. Doll collecting feels like a movement of the past—but visions of dolls stacked in delicate glass cabinets at antique malls or an older person’s home feel like the kind of preciousness that is perfectly distilled into girlishness. Dolls are a natural decor statement since they often need to be displayed. The return of dolls has already started, with people on TikTok showing off their own dolls inspired by the original, ultrarare, incredibly stylized Blythe dolls. If real dolls aren’t for you, you can integrate them into art, figurines or sculptures—vaguely creepy and cute is the essence of girlhood anyway.
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