To my green velvet couch

Maximalist Essay No. 1

Velvet has always been equated with luxury, style, and richness in my mind. It’s allegedly impractical, difficult to clean, and eye-popping in a way that dictates the aesthetic of an entire room. It’s not decidedly feminine, but it certainly doesn’t scream masculine the way chestnut or sepia leather might. Instead, it’s nestled in its own place, an icon of maximalism, whether in decor, apparel, or somewhere beyond. No minimalist would ever dare center an entire room on a jewel-toned, grass green velvet couch. Yet when I think about my own personal tipping point into full maximalism—at least as it stands with decor—I think of mine. 

When the idea of living in my own space, a room of my own dictated by my own flair and personality, first came to mind, I always knew a velvet couch would be the primary focal point. Velvet is rough and surprisingly durable, but glimmers beautifully, angling in the light to show off a gradient of colors. As furniture goes, it will always catch your eye. 

I didn’t think buying a velvet sofa was going to signal my status in society when I purchased it, but it did feel like I’d reached the landmark of adulthood when I finally clicked “Complete order.” After all, it had oddly been a focal point of the dreams of my youth to own one.

After several years, the couch is worn in, but in that comforting, lived-in way. It’s not yet jumped from looking cozy and well-loved to worn-down and scorned. While I love the newness of an everyday object, I love even more watching it age and mold itself to my own personal world. By contrast, there’s something frightening about a brand-new object, especially in furniture, its stiffness uninviting, beckoning guests to steer clear instead of cozy-down. 

(Admittedly, I have been known to tell certain clumsy or drunk visitors to sit elsewhere. Can you blame me? Lived-in maximalism is fine and worthy of appreciation, but aging an item prematurely with spills and muck is something I rarely stand for.)

I’ve piled the center with vintage pillows. One is a muted navy, striped to imittate a zebra, but not quite, more like an imitation of the creature. The other is yellow-olive, speckled with a dotted, criss-cross print. There’s one more usually placed in front of these, a lumbar with bright pinks and magentas, but since its vintage there are holes all over it, and I’ve been long overdue to patch them up. I’ve tucked it elsewhere so as to not make matters worse.

Already, I love that these two (sometimes three) pillows don’t belong together, at least not by the guidelines and rules of a strict color palette. Couple that with my sofa, and it becomes that perfect medley of things that shouldn’t match, but definitely do.

I’ve added on to this with a light lavender knit blanket from Anthropologie, which is always folded and nestled behind the pillows, oftentime with my cat, Granger, sleeping on top of it. Some of the yarn is a pink-orange, others a deeper magenta. These colors shouldn’t go with my couch either.

When I’m feeling more cozy, I pile on more blankets—a white hand-crocheted one my aunt made me one Christmas, a cheap pink fluffy one from Target. Velvet gives off the false impression of being stiff and stubborn, so I tell myself that in piling these objects on, I’m correcting a misrepresentation.

Indeed, my couch is surprisingly comfortable. There are dips and sags in the pillows, worn down from sleeping cats and long conversations. A quick fluff, a vacuum, a steam, and they’re nearly new. One green bolster pillow covers up a wine stain—self-inflicted by yours truly, ironic given my rules and regulations for the dubbed clumsy—that only a critical eye would pick out. A few years ago, my cousin kicked a full glass of wine across a yellow velvet couch in a home we were renting. Wine was all over my aunt, uncle, and cousin. They looked straight out of a Tarantino film. My aunt spent the night brushing it out with a toothbrush and vinegar, but it never looked the same. 

That’s not how this wine stain looks. I tended to mine with love, patience, and I suppose a little experience. Blot, blot, blot. Steam. Then dry it out with a blow dryer. Like that, nearly good as new. It only reaffirmed my choice in a dark velvet color, nothing too light and forthcoming in any flaw it took on.

“Blue or green?” I asked a designer friend at work when I was deciding what color to choose. Her home decor style was mid-century modern, but had splashes of color and fun throughout. Though I’d asked people who were closer to me, I knew deep down she had a pulse on my style, and whatever she suggested would be the right one long term. I’d opt for it without thought after she decided. (Did she realize my couch’s fate rested solely in her hands?)

Blue was safe. It went with feminine colors like pink or pastels, yet also would hide any magnificent stain doomed to happen. For an investment piece, it felt boring, but in a secure way that all drab investments feel. I would buy the blue couch, and if my decor style changed in a few years, the expense wouldn’t feel like a loss. I could always find a space for a blue couch like this, which was part of the problem. 

Green was bold and risky. I’m a risk-averse person, but the more I looked at that emerald green, the more it defined my vision of a velvet sofa that caught your eye, that made you feel special to lounge on. It reminded me of a jungle, of nature, of a loud color palette that mixes and matches with things that it shouldn’t, that you stare at and wonder how all these incongruous things sit together side-by-side and look beautiful. There wouldn’t always be a space for this couch.

It looked like a couch I could hate in a few years. Maybe. It certainly wasn’t the secure relationship the coastal blue couch promised.

“I think green,” she said, disagreeing with nearly everyone I had spoken to, including my mother, who has defined the word “investment purchase” as I know it today. “Everyone will have the blue couch. It’s safe.”

And now here I am with my ode to bold my green couch. 

Maximalism is often about the tiny, intricate items, jammed into the perfect place, the piles of books and objects placed artfully in a stack, not pristine, but deliberate. A green velvet couch feels like a confounding place to begin these essays, and yet its gargantuan size becomes emblematic of maximization. It’s larger than life, longer than me even. You walk by it, you see it, and you remember it. Unlike many of the objects in my home, it’s a part of me that everyone can be a part of. Friends pile onto it with drinks in hand, eager to gossip. Diego and I spoon as we watch a movie, and I try not to fall asleep. My brother watches a movie, feet propped up on my coffee table (another object, maybe it’ll receive its own essay one day.) My mom avoids the couch, but admires it from afar—cat hair. Blue or green, she wouldn’t have sat on it either way.

The dips in the tufted bench seat aren’t just from me. They are imprints from long nights leaned over a puzzle or watching The Sound of Music. People I love have sat there, been comforted there, maybe even shed a tear. People I love less have also sat there too, their impressions less deep, but still there, crushing that velvet fabric down, even if only for a short while, never long enough to permanently change the direction of each twine. 

In many ways, maybe a bright couch, the focal point of the room, is an exact metaphor for what maximalism should be. Invite someone into your home, offer them something nice on the rocks, and let them sit in a spot so many have sat before, carving out a new impression of daylight and night in your mind. The more people that fill the spot, the more times I lie there with a novel and my cats purring on my chest, the more maximum that three-seat piece of furniture becomes. 

It’s a lovely couch, yes. 

One day I’ll look at it, and say “It’s time for a new one. I’m so sick of looking at it.” 

It’s not much different from everything else in life. Relationships. Jobs. Haircuts. Its time will come when it feels hard to say goodbye, but just right. A day, a year, a moment longer, and then the sweet is gone from the bitter and you want it out, out, out.

But for now, I’ll marvel at my little seat of maximalism, swap out the pillows when their time is here, and hope together we can make it last until then.