LOIVĒ

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 80-year-old version of us.

The woman who already knows which things mattered.
Which things really didn’t.
Which risks were worth taking.
Which opinions we should have ignored.
And which ordinary Tuesday somehow became one of the stories we still tell.

I call her my Inner Granny.

Lately I’ve been asking her more questions.

Not what should I do?
But what will I wish I had done?

It changes the answer surprisingly often.

So perhaps this is your reminder too:

Do it so the 80-year-old you has stories, not regrets.

What would your 80-year-old self tell you to do right now?

Something new is finding its way into the House.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what House of ROSE really is.

It’s a way of seeing.

Noticing what others might walk past. Following a feeling before knowing exactly where it leads. Taking fragments from different places, people, memories and moments and allowing them to become a world of their own.

Paris changed something in me.
And now Lamu is doing it again, in a completely different way.

New colours. New textures. Boats, birds, old walls, palms, enormous skies, people, stories. And somehow all of it is finding its way back into the work.

This week I started creating these OF ROSE Works on Paper.

They feel different from anything I’ve made before. More tactile. More spacious. A little strange. Sometimes bold. Sometimes almost silent. And always with one foot somewhere between the real world and imagination.

This is the first one.

And perhaps that is also where House of ROSE is going: deeper into creating worlds that make you feel something before you can explain why.

For myself. For the people I create brand worlds with. And for all of you who have been stepping into this world with me.

I’m curious…

Would you like to see more of these Works on Paper here? And perhaps even collect them one day? Or should I add it like the images to The Mood Library?

Feels like another little door in the House just opened. 🤍

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until something makes you feel it.

An image.

A colour.

A woman you somehow recognise, even though you’ve never met her.

A room you want to walk into.

A moment that reminds you of a life you haven’t lived yet.

That tiny pull is interesting to me.

Because creativity doesn’t always begin with knowing.

Sometimes it begins with recognising.

This feels like me.

This is where I want to go.

This is the world I want to create.

And then you follow it.

One image becomes another.

A feeling becomes a visual language.

A visual language becomes a world.

And suddenly the thing that was difficult to explain is right there in front of you.

That is what I want The Mood Library to be.

Not somewhere you go because you need another image for Instagram.

Somewhere you go when you want to see what you’ve been trying to say.

For your brand.
Your work.
Your home.
Your next chapter.
Or simply yourself.

You don’t always have to know where you’re going. Sometimes you just need to notice what pulls you closer.

Enter The Mood Library through the link in bio. 🤍

The story changes depending on where you choose to look.

At the woman running.

Or what she might be running towards.

At the empty room.

Or everything that could happen inside it.

At the bird.

Or the tiny figure underneath it.

At the face.

Or the butterflies someone imagined growing from it.

This is what I love about creative direction.

It’s not simply choosing beautiful images.

It’s deciding where we look, what we notice, what we leave out, what we move towards and what we make someone feel.

Two people can look at exactly the same world and tell completely different stories.

And I think the most interesting brands do the same.

They don’t show us everything.

They have a point of view.

A rhythm.

Quiet moments and loud ones.

Things that make perfect sense beside things that make you stop for a second.

A world you begin to recognise without needing to see the logo.

That is how I build brand worlds.

And it’s also how I create The Mood Library.

Not as a collection of images that all look the same, but as hundreds of little doors into different stories.

You choose the ones that make you stop.

And slowly, your own world begins to appear.

Feel first. Follow what pulls you closer. Build from there.

The Mood Library is waiting at the link in bio. 🤍

You don’t need another folder full of beautiful images you’ll never use.

You need the moment when you open something and immediately think:

There. That’s it.

That feels like me.

That feels like my brand.

That’s the feeling I couldn’t explain.

Because the exhausting part of creating isn’t always creating.

It’s searching.

Opening Pinterest for “five minutes.”

Scrolling through stock libraries.

Saving references.

Trying three different images in Canva.

Wondering why everything looks beautiful… but somehow nothing feels right.

That’s why I created The Mood Library.

A growing visual world of photography, illustrations, art and motion, made to give you somewhere to return to.

Because the strongest brands aren’t built from individual posts.

They’re built as worlds.

Worlds with a feeling, a character, a visual language people begin to recognise before they even see your name.

Some days you’ll find the image for tomorrow’s post.

Other days you’ll discover a colour that changes your whole brand direction.

Or an illustration you want above your desk.

Or one strange little granny who reminds you to stop caring quite so much what everybody thinks.

That’s the part I love.

You come looking for an image.

And sometimes you find a little piece of yourself.

Feel first. Build your world from there. 🤍

Comment MOOD and I’ll send you 11 complimentary visuals to start exploring.

Maybe the beauty you see in the world says something about the beauty that lives inside you.

Someone recently reminded me:

Open your eyes. Hold your children close. Look at what so many people don’t see. And enjoy it.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Especially here in Lamu.

Tasting baobab seeds for the first time.

Smelling the flowers of an acacia tree.

The salt on our skin after crossing the water.

The sound of donkeys passing through the narrow streets.

The boys discovering things I would probably have walked straight past.

The smiles on faces.

The conversations with people whose lives look completely different from mine.

The wind changing just before sunset.

The quiet moments when nobody needs anything and, for a second, you’re simply there.

We spend so much of life waiting for the big moments.

The arrival.
The success.
The love story.
The new house.
The next adventure.

But perhaps the adventure is all these tiny moments in between.

The things you taste.

The things you smell.

The people you meet.

The hands you hold.

The things you notice because, for once, you weren’t looking at your phone or rushing somewhere else.

A new life doesn’t always announce itself loudly.

Sometimes it begins with becoming curious again.

Opening your eyes a little wider.

Holding the people you love a little closer.

And noticing what so many others walk past.

There is still so much we haven’t seen.

So much we haven’t tasted.

So many people we haven’t met.

And so many adventures we don’t even know are waiting for us yet.

Look closer. Life is already happening. 🤍

Maybe your inner granny isn’t old.
Maybe she’s just done asking for permission.

She drives the boat.

Takes the motorbike.

Wears the silk trousers on a Tuesday.

DJs until everyone else wants to go home.

Changes her mind.

Starts again.

Falls in love with places she never planned to stay.

She knows something we spend an extraordinary amount of our lives trying to learn:

Most people aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are.

So wear it.
Make it.
Leave.
Stay.
Dance.
Build the strange idea.
Take the seat at the front of the boat.

Maybe becoming yourself isn’t about discovering some entirely new version of you.

Maybe it’s about slowly removing all the things you learned to be embarrassed about.

The loudness.
The softness.
The ambition.
The weirdness.
The joy.

Until there you are.

Unapologetically, unmistakably you.

Your inner granny has been waiting. She has places to go. 🤍

New women, worlds and a little more beautiful rebellion are landing in The Mood Library.

Tomorrow, I leave Paris. And I have that strange feeling you get when you know you’re not quite the same person who arrived.

For the past month, I’ve walked a lot.
Looked at art.
Watched people.
Sat in cafés.
Changed my mind about things.
Made things I hadn’t planned to make.

And somewhere between all of it, a new chapter quietly started before I even knew what to call it.

I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to know where we’re going.

To have the plan.
The answer.
The next five steps.

But some of the best chapters of my life started with nothing more sophisticated than:

this feels alive. I’m going that way.

Tomorrow, Paris disappears behind me again and the next adventure begins.

And perhaps that’s what Bubble Gum Girl has been whispering all along:

She had better things to do than live the life everyone expected of her.

So do you.

Bubble Gum Girl is now available to download through the link in my bio.
Print her. Pin her above your desk. Put her on the fridge.

A tiny reminder to go where life feels alive. 🤍