Nothing says “you have a fantastic sense of style!” quite like… your choices offer “a valuable lesson in color trends.”
Cockburn can’t imagine what Mrs. Cockburn’s reaction would be if he said that about her eveningwear, yet that’s the best Homes & Gardens could come up with in describing the “controversial” paint colors Kamala Harris chose for the interior of her official residence.
Harris’s Number One Observatory Circle home is full of “anti-fashion” gray hues, explains the publication, with the open-place space boasting “a strikingly gray color palette — from the painted walls to the drapes, dining chairs, and large rug atop the wood floor.”
In other words, the vice president’s domicile is drab AF. Though Homes & Gardens refrains from saying so, deliberately brushing by the lack of an appealing aesthetic with the deftness of an artist touching up Michelangelo’s frescoes.
“There is no denying the abundance of this ‘anti-fashion’ hue,” the story notes, “but it’s also hard to dispute how well this color works in the room.”
Yes, indeed. Cockburn has also found that gray-everything also works well in the rooms of Super 8 hotels and NATO nuclear bunkers.
Homes & Gardens consulted Washington-based designer Rachel Waldron in an attempt to rationalize why Harris’s interior design does work, damnit! — despite an Instagram photo showing the world that her living quarters appear to have been furnished with a Rooms To Go starter set.
“At Waldron Designs, we do not believe in dated colors, only dated color combinations utilized in spaces that they are not well-suited for,” Waldron explains to us dumb proles who make design choices based on how they look. “Every color has a place and appropriate use. So, if the question is whether gray is a good field color option to use as a neutral, the answer is yes — in the right environment.”
This isn’t the first time Kamala Harris’s situational awareness has been called into question. Back in 2021, Town & Country decided to talk about Kamala’s “fashion,” if it can be called that. “She wants us to,” declared the magazine, before determining her “straightforward and professional” clothes actually disguise “their power as a messaging tool.”
Cockburn is personally fond of supple velvets and rich mahoganies — the type of ornamentation found in his favorite old DC saloons — and of a sartorial style that bespeaks timeless elegance. If Harris’s color trends do indeed offer a “valuable” lesson, Cockburn concludes that lesson is that unimaginative monochromatism is a no-no.
