I devoured the journalist Hamish Bowles’s recent account of his recovery from a severe stroke, not just because good writing on life-altering events is my favourite genre, but for the way it explored the role of beauty in his recovery – and his life.
Bowles, who is World of Interiors’ editor-at-large, was pondering buying a “1930s gold lamé Lanvin dress” the day he was catapulted into the unlovely but life-saving surroundings of a stroke unit for 50 days, then into rehab for many more. He describes the things that first helped him to feel like himself, intubated and unable to speak, and those that shaped his long, slow convalescence. A “pomegranate-scented terracotta potpourri”, violet-scented face cream, lavender roses from Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and an “exquisite arrangement” delivered by Marc Jacobs, who wore a “wide-lapel jacket of shocking pink”. Bowles’s world gradually widens again in recovery, taking in Vermeer and Hockney exhibitions, and for his first trip home he wears a “vintage amethyst corduroy Dries Van Noten suit”.
I’m wearing a food-stained H&M shirt and saggy men’s khakis and sitting next to the earthly remains of a long-deceased plant I feel no compulsion to tackle, but I loved it. Bowles’s faith in the restorative power of beauty is very touching, plus I have a bit of a thing for (professional? vocational?) aesthetes.
I’m using “aesthete” as shorthand for the designers, artists and creative directors whose lives I gawp at online. Unlike the 19th-century originals who viewed beauty as its own virtue, divorced from Victorian notions of morality, they aren’t a philosophical movement – at most a loose network of people who love beautiful stuff. Every time one mentions another, I follow them, forging wistful parasocial connections with tastemakers who have strong opinions about provenance and precise shade of socks, who are repulsed by extension leads and know all about 18th-century marquetry gaming tables. Their lives look exquisite: they’ve never found a square of kitchen roll full of fingernail clippings on the coffee table, have they? If so, you’d never guess.
I really shouldn’t love them, but I do, albeit ambivalently. It’s complicated. Unpacking my feelings, there’s envy, inadequacy and a feeling of being left out that sours into a chippy desire to mock, but mainly admiration.
Why admiration? Being an aesthete isn’t like working for Médecins Sans Frontières or hospice nursing. And when the world is ugly in such urgently terrible ways, pursuing beauty can feel frivolous. You’ve managed to source antique Persian faïence from Isfahan for your splashback? Yay you. It’s hard to claim the world needs more interior designers – though how many of our jobs are remotely necessary? Certainly not mine.
This idea of good taste feels exclusive, even elitist – a product of privilege. Accessing beauty isn’t obvious or easy: it can feel like a private club, gatekept by style arbiters who know where to go, who to know and what goes with what. And let’s mention money: although elements of the original Aesthetic Movement thought deeply about democratising beauty and Oscar Wilde’s The House Beautiful lecture assured listeners: “I do not ask you to spend large sums,” contemporary aestheticism at least entertains the possibility that you might be interested in price-on-application bronze and porcelain chandeliers, or £170-a-metre ancient Egypt-inspired wallpaper.
Inspiration is free, though, and contemporary aesthetes aren’t necessarily born into beauty and privilege. Luke Edward-Hall, whose beautiful Bloomsbury-reminiscent life I admire online, was raised in Basingstoke – “concrete, roundabouts, bypasses” – and discovered his passion via a National Trust Saturday job.
I’m not the aesthete defence society (imagine the unacceptable hideousness of the logo I’d design), but I admire them because they care, deeply, and share what they love. That might not be the democratisation the original aesthetes imagined, but it does feel generous. I love being shown beauty: it’s a corrective to the deadening, boring algorithmic homogenisation of everything.
Plus it’s life-affirming to know there are people passionately concerned that everything should be the loveliest version of itself. Don’t we all need a reminder that the world can be – still is – beautiful?
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
