Avocado Green

My mother loved the color avocado green. She didn’t merely like it—she committed to it.

In 1969, my family moved into a 1950s split-level home in the suburbs. My parents enlisted a good family friend, Miss Ruby, to help my mother renovate and decorate it. Miss Ruby had impeccable taste and was known for her lovely home. For weeks, the two of them shopped for furniture, draperies, rugs, tile, art, and appliances.

When it was finished, our home looked as though it had come straight from a magazine. But one thing was immediately apparent: my mother had discovered avocado green. The color was everywhere in our house—the draperies, kitchen appliances, area rugs, tile, side chairs—she even had the siding on the home’s exterior replaced with the same green.

Truly, it was lovely, especially the way Miss Ruby paired it with soft gold, maple hardwoods, and antique white walls—but there was a lot of it. My mother had definitely struck her pose with avocado green. 

As the years went on and harvest gold and avocado green cooled in popularity, it did not affect my mother. She continued to lean into it—green car, green coat, and later, even green wall-to-wall carpeting.

My siblings, my father, and I would often tease her about how much she liked the color. She would laugh along with us and simply say, “You like what you like.” The color was her favorite, and she didn’t apologize for it. Her confidence and individuality were on full display as she proudly surrounded herself with a color that she found warm, comforting, and pretty.

I look back today on my mother’s love affair with avocado green, and I see now that I learned so much from her: Be yourself, discover what you love, embrace what makes you feel good, surround yourself with your favorite things—no apologies needed.  

I watched her display her independence and self-definition in her approach to her favorite color and so many other things. Because of her example, I have no hesitation about surrounding myself with autumn colors, images of reptiles, art pottery, Halloween décor (lots of it), and just old stuff in general. I'm comfortable with what I like, and my home is a reflection of it.

When I began writing The Design Pose, I wanted to encourage people to discover what they genuinely loved, commit to it, and allow their homes to reflect it—to strike a pose. Only now do I understand that my mother taught me that lesson long before I ever gave it a name. She struck her pose in avocado green.

I learned to strike my own by watching her.

Thank you for reading. I hope Avocado Green inspires you to trust what you love and allow your home to reflect it.

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