CHRISTIE TYLER
For fashion creative Christie Tyler, sophistication is effortless. Christie is known for her distinctive style that revolves around neutrals. But she also champions sustainability and comfort. Hers feels to be an authentic voice on a platform where so many are trying to be like everyone else. One strategy is her commitment to sourcing vintage, so many of her garments, accessories, and homewares truly feel one-of-a-kind.
And for Christie, fashion and interiors go hand in hand. In 2019, she co-founded Vollective, an online, sustainably-driven business that sells vintage jewelry and homewares. Occasionally, they also sell books – one of the items Christie has said gives her the most joy in her home. She’s an avid reader and spoke with us about the books that have had a profound impact on her.
Just Kids is a novel that honestly changed my perspective. I was pretty late to the Patti Smith party, but once I was there I never wanted to leave. Just Kids made me so much more open to art, to music, to passions that I’ve always had but never felt like I could really dive into. The experience of New York — of art, of love, of passion — how deeply you can love a friend, how life changes as you change but shows you exactly what you need in a funny way. It was inspiring to me how Patti Smith fell into her passions with time. Everything is so fast-paced nowadays, and to me it was the perfect example of how everything will happen the way it’s supposed to.
“So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.”
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
I read Americanah in 2016 and fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writing. She makes you think about racism, identity, security, that feeling of home. I read it when I was only a year of living in the city, when everything still felt foreign. I found comfort in her words yet was forced to think deeper.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a fun read, mostly focused on human experiences and love, or intertwining those two. It makes you think about history and about memory. It was a book that taught me not to take everything too seriously, though I don’t think that is its intention. There’s a story in Invisible Cities (it is all short stories) that always sticks in my mind — it is about a girl losing her bikini bottoms in the ocean and she almost dies because she’d rather not die of embarrassment. I had to put the book down and assess life after that one because I understood.
Giovanni’s Room also taught me a lot about identity, about how if you’re not your true self, you can lose yourself…and about how a person can feel like home.
Territory of Light is not necessarily a comfortable read. It challenges the idea of motherhood and desire and there are a lot of sentences that stick in your mind in the most beautifully haunting way.