It might come as no surprise that bizarre-looking items and weird design solutions are things that tend to grab our attention and not let it go. After all, there’s some amount of beauty in any imperfection, even when it leaves us surprised, delighted, or a bit shocked.
Today, people and projects that show the opposite of what is considered to be good taste often get branded as bold, courageous, and adventurous. And Ksenia Shestakovskaia is one of them. The textile and graphic designer created Decor Hardcore in 2015 as a collection of unusual images of curiosities she came across on the web.
"I was running into quite specific images and I started to collect them. I had to share it! I’d show these crazy pictures to people and they’d say, 'I remember my Grandmother had something like that,'" she told AnOther Magazine.
Ever since she started posting on Instagram, she has amassed quite the audience. As of today, the account has more than 375K devoted fans who admire her online collection full of pink living rooms and rose quartz baths. "At the beginning, I was wondering what would happen if I ran out of material because I post a lot," she said. "But every time I went on, I realized it was endless. It’s like an ocean of treasures! So I’m not concerned."
When it comes to design, she mentioned that she sees emotional connection as the most important thing. "It has to create a little heart-pinch. I’m pinched quite often when I see these pictures, I’m completely overwhelmed." Other times, she comes across objects that are very aesthetically displeasing but deserve to be noticed. "Sometimes it’s so extreme that I have to post it! These might be things I would never buy for myself, or as a present, but the pictures are incredible."
Michael Garrett, one of her best friends and business partner, later joined curating the account and helped develop Decor Hardcore even further. The duo has created a line of merch, a creative studio, and they’ve even got the opportunity to partner up on campaigns and projects with brands like Gucci and Versace.
"Fashion started to bore me to death," Shestakovskaia told Vogue. "I was in the same place with fashion, bored and disillusioned," added Garrett. "When Ksenia began showing me early glimpses of Decor Hardcore, which at the time was still just her private collection of eBay images, I got hooked."
Their vision "is all about not taking design or anything too seriously, and proving that heaven is indeed a place on earth," she told i-D. Well, if heaven is full of pink velvet, over-the-top bathrooms, and inflatable bouncy castles, it seems they have succeeded.
Shestakovskaia is constantly keeping an eye out for the perfect picture and looks for a range of criteria, whether it’s unexpected solutions or simply lucky accidents. The designer enjoys coming across the story behind an image, feeling the atmosphere, and understanding people’s decisions. "Decor is not only my work, it's my entire approach to life, my attitude, dreams, and sometimes nightmares," she said. "When I'm not working on it, I'm fantasizing about situations or things, and then I try to discover if they exist."
"Decor Hardcore is about the variety of choices, not about certain aesthetics," Shestakovskaia added. "So much design is confined to 'must have' or 'must be,' looking proper, and trying to make sense. Our brand fulfills the lack of a certain offer for fun, and something unpolished or unexpected. To me, it's natural that a girl would have a bath that looks like a seashell because it's beautiful and magical. I just look around myself, or I search for things that entertain and make me happy. Apparently, they make many other people happy, too!"
