Spaces in Isolation by Chloe Becker

It has been over a year since COVID-19 has dramatically altered our world. As a result, we have been spending an increasing amount of time at home. Furthermore, the word home for college students has always been a complex term. Is home our childhood bedroom? Is it Gibbons, Grandmarc, a sorority, or a fraternity? Right now most of us are forced to find our home in a small room and stay in it for an uncomfortable portion of our day. This has resulted in a dramatic decrease in social interaction. With less social interaction comes more time alone, and more alone time forces everyone to become comfortable with their own company. So how do we make this alone time more enjoyable? This recent decrease in socialization has taken away our many opportunities to find joy in expressing ourselves through personal style. However, we have spent so much time in the confines of our apartments and dorm rooms that these spaces have perhaps morphed into our identities. Making these spaces of solitude ones that truly feel personalized and in line with who we are has become an integral part of finding joy in these times.

Before Covid, my personal style was a tool I used to express myself, as I am sure it was for many others. I found joy in picking out an outfit and wearing it to class. It was a daily choice that allowed me to dictate how others perceived me in a controlled, yet small, way. I admit I found solace in compliments, and validation was something I chased. Nowadays I find that external acknowledgment in close friends, but it is a much less frequent occurrence. Instead, I think a lot of us have channeled the desire to express ourselves through the personalization of our interior spaces. We no longer have as much agency over how others perceive us through the way we dress. I think it’s almost a cliche at this point to make a note of this- but we have all been spending a lot of time in sweatpants. However, now we can explore self-expression through new forms of media. We don’t need to ornament our bodies, we can ornament our walls and our furniture and be content with these spaces without the need for external validation.

There is a certain power that exists within creating a space for ourselves and not having to share it with others. That’s the difference between fashion and interior design. With fashion (before the pandemic) we would put on outfits and go on with our days in public spaces. People would see our choices of self-expression. They had an open window into how we saw ourselves that day, and how we chose to manifest it through our clothing. Now we can make these choices and keep them private. We only need to share our spaces with people we feel comfortable letting in. This selective internalization is what I think has made interior design during the Covid pandemic so powerful.

Empowerment is found when we get our spaces right, but what happens when our spaces don’t match our personalities? I think that can result in the same unsettling feeling of leaving your house and realizing that you are completely uncomfortable and stuck in a certain outfit for the day. Although this may seem trivial, this mismatched feeling can have a much larger impact on the courses of our days than we might think. When this negative duality exists constantly in the air of our studying, sleeping, and living spaces, the effects are even more detrimental to the minds of the visually inclined. However, the good thing is that spaces can be transformed, and as college students, our spaces are seldom permanent. So, as long as this pandemic continues, and as long as we are stuck in our little rooms, we have been given a gift. We can take risks without fear, and rather than finding joy in expressing ourselves to others, we can find ourselves through the curation of our temporary spaces. Where we spend the majority of our time has more of an impact on us than we would think.

“I sometimes wonder if the way I decorate my room is a projection of who I want to be vs a representation of who I actually am.”