The Key to Creating Your Most Beautiful Life With Camille Styles

The Key to Creating Your Most Beautiful Life With Camille Styles

11/12/2021

Camille Styles knows—and wants you to know too—that life's everyday moments are worth celebrating. As founder and editor-in-chief of her eponymous lifestyle publication, she and her fantastic team have become a definitive guide to designing a life where the things that excite you become part of your day-to-day reality. Through their insightful tips for inviting gatherings, delicious recipes, and advice on interior design, wellness, and beauty, the publication provides a refreshing approach to helping you live well. Camille and her husband's Austin home has been a constant source of inspiration, so we were excited to visit the founder and editor-in-chief after a recent living space refresh. During our tour, we had the opportunity for a quick sit-down with Camille. We talked about her start into creating lifestyle content, how the publication has grown, her at-home style (including a few styling tips to recreate her look), and a few of her favorite Lulu and Georgia pieces she's added to her living space. Read on for more.

Shop Camille's Living Re-Design 

How did you start in the influencer space, and was there a specific moment or project that made you decide to create editorial content professionally?

In my mid-twenties, I had an event planning company that ran out of the tiny basement in the house I shared with my husband. And I loved it—helping my clients create their vision for a party, collaborating with creatives in food and design, the adrenaline rush of bringing it all to life. But it wasn't long before I craved a creative outlet that was all my own, and I decided to try out a blog where I could share my inspiration and entertaining tips. It was a pre-influencer and pre-social media world, and there was no "growth strategy" or end game. Blogging was just something I did for fun, and I honestly never imagined that it would become the focus of my career for the next 12 years. I just knew that I loved creating in this space, and as I started to build an audience, I loved having a community to share it with.

I'll never forget going to my first blogger conference about a year later and actually selling my first banner ad to a home decor brand. It was a whopping $300 for a month, which wasn't much but the idea that I could actually make money off what I was doing online excited me. So I decided to go all in—my one employee, our "events assistant," became our "assistant editor," and we were off to the races. And you know that big "tipping point" you always hear about, the one where Vogue or Good Morning America features your website, and suddenly, you have a million readers and are rolling in advertisers? Well... it didn't happen quite like that. It was more of an uphill grind, one in which I kept learning and evolving as the landscape changed. And little by little, we grew and evolved, and the company became something that I couldn't have even dreamed up in those early days of writing the blog in my basement.

Today, Camille Styles receives over 13 million on-site page views a month, with a social reach of over 50 million. Our team is based in Austin, Los Angeles, New York, and beyond, and we create daily lifestyle content to help our audience live their most beautiful and authentic lives. 

We love your mission of helping people create their most beautiful life. Tell us about your journey to making that vision a reality.

It's a journey that's been about discovering what lights me up inside and intentionally designing a life in which those experiences are part of my day-to-day reality. Maybe it's carving out 10 minutes in the morning to journal with my cup of coffee or taking time to enjoy the process of cooking dinner at the end of a workday and sharing it with my family. Still, for me, it's been all about learning to follow what makes me feel excited and alive. It takes courage to walk a different path than what others might see as the right or obvious one, but learning to listen to my inner wisdom has been a major part of discovering a deeper joy every day.

 

Your Austin home is the setting for a lot of the content the publication creates. How would you describe your at-home decor style?

I love my home and get so much creative inspiration from updating and refreshing it—it truly feels like my own little studio to experiment and play. I love simplicity and natural materials, which often translates to a neutral color palette with lots of cozy, organic texture. And then, I always like to incorporate sculptural lines and interesting shapes that convey a soft, serene beauty.

Your living room has recently undergone a stunning refresh. What was the inspiration behind the update for your space?

My husband, Adam, and I have lived in our house since we built it 11 years ago, and we were ready to make a few changes. We truly love our home, but we wanted it to more closely reflect the way our own aesthetic has evolved through the years. Think lighter, earthier, and more expressive. We added plaster to the walls, added a few key furniture pieces, and changed up some cabinetry in our open kitchen, dining, and living space to better support the way we live, cook, and entertain.

You've brought in the Maleena Rug as a focal point; what were some key factors in choosing it? 

I'm always looking for ways to add more warmth and comfort to a room, and for me, that usually means adding texture. It makes a huge difference to any space, especially one like my living room, featuring a palette of neutral tones. This rug has beautiful geometric lines and is beyond soft under my feet—it truly makes me want to curl up in front of the fire and never leave.

A few more Lulu and Georgia pieces are layered into your living room. Is there another style you still find yourself fawning over? 

There are a few! First, the Lemieux et Cie Mouren Sculpture—I love the rounded, sculptural lines this brings to my bookshelves. The unfinished reclaimed teak wood Arlene Bench is truly timeless. I really like the rustic touch it currently adds to our living room, but when I'm ready to change things up, it'll look equally beautiful at the foot of our bed or pulled up to the table when we need extra seating. Lastly is the Josline Floor Lamp; I didn't realize how much my living room was missing a floor lamp until I got this one and experienced its magical glow on my bookshelves, especially as the sun sets in the evening. I love the bit of contrast this matte black design gives against our white walls.

 

Any advice for those looking to update their living room—including maybe a couple of people wanting to recreate your look? 

Sometimes, less is more! If you follow many interior designers like me, it can be overwhelming when faced with lots of styling inspo and decked-out bookshelves daily. When my space needs a change, I always start with a good edit and eliminate the pieces that aren't speaking to me anymore. If you've got a beautiful vase, bowl, or sculptural object, let it shine on a bookshelf or coffee table without a lot of other adornments.

I also love to mix different wood tones in the same room—it's one of my favorite ways to add interest to an all-neutral space like this one. The blend of white oak, medium warm tones, and dark espresso wood in our living room provides necessary contrast and even a bit of drama.

Whether in your living space or elsewhere around the house, what are five things you can't live without in your home? 

  1. Beautiful ceramic bowls in different sizes. I love to fill them with seasonal objects in the center of a table (lemons in summer, pumpkins in fall!) or place one on a shelf or console table as its own sculptural object. My newest fave is this terracotta Harolyn Bowl.
  2. Heavy linen napkins that double as beautiful touches to a place setting or dish towels in the kitchen.
  3. Vases in lots of sizes to display fresh cut flowers, seasonal branches, or dried palm leaves. The Salamat Ceramics Canal Vase is the perfect piece for my bedside or coffee table.
  4. My massive cookbook collection! I get inspiration from their pages every day. Current faves include the Gjelina cookbook, Eat Out Loud by Eden Grinshpan, and Six Seasons by Joshua Mcfadden.
  5. Wooden boards for chopping, serving, and displaying in my kitchen—my love for a great wood cutting board knows no bounds.

As the holiday season quickly approaches, what is a holiday tradition you're excited to celebrate this upcoming holiday season? 

I love the evening that our family spends decorating the Christmas tree. We turn on holiday music, make hot chocolate, and spread out all our ornaments in front of the fire. Every year, I get each family member a new one, so it's always fun to look back at ornaments from years past and remember.

What's next for you and Camille Styles, the lifestyle publication? 

After running Camille Styles for over a decade, I feel more excited than ever to continue growing, evolving, finding joy in the moments, and inspiring our audience to do the same! We've got lots of ideas and collaborations in the works—it's a season of planning and lots of behind-the-scenes work—but my dream is that we'll continue finding fresh new ways to inspire our audience to live the lives they dream about.

 

Photography by Michelle Nash for Camille Styles.