Hilary Robertson: Styling a Beautiful Truth

Talking to Strangers (About Music)

It is fitting that in our chat, in her sumptuous living quarters in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, stylist/creative director Hilary Robertson would quote Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn.
She waved her hand this way and that with her usual English dramatic flair, and the crisp striped fabric of the full-length dress shirt she wore shifted slightly.
"'Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth' or something like that," she said, eyes up toward the soaring brownstone parlor ceiling as she rendered the perfectly apropos words. I remembered then, with a smile, the moment many years back when I encountered this wild wonderful woman, how I'd laughed loudly at the discovery of her at a crowded party when she spoke with such conviction of the brilliant beautiful world she was born in to, and lived in still, in her mind.
Hilary Robertson creates beauty and, with it, The Truth, as she so clearly sees it. With the just-perfect placement of a Grecian Urn, together with a plaster lamp, and a horsehair couch, she can make you see it too: Aaaaaah, the joy of living, the art of it!
Her styling of such an artful world and her writing of it in lyrical prose have appeared in the pages of magazines world round, and in the pages of her own and others' books on Interiors, which you can see and learn more about at www.HilaryRobertson.com. When we sat down together over the delicious avocado toast she'd prepared, I was finally able to ask her directly what it's all about, the whole 'style' thing, why beautiful 'stuff' is so important. What impact do our interiors have on our interior life, I wondered aloud, and she went there with me, as she does, with thoughts culled from a life filled with music, literature and art.
There is a soulfulness and a spirituality to the combinations Hilary puts together in her still-lifes. "Authenticity," she said at one point, holding up her pointer finger decidedly. And I nodded. Yes. Strong images, filled with shapes and colors, somehow resonate in our bodies and minds as what is real, and true. And finding an expression for that truth, my friend Hilary well knows, can heal us.