“When a girl’s room is messy, it’s Sofia Coppola,” says one popular TikTok, the audio of which has been reused countless times. An enduring trend on the platform over the last two years, the “Messy Girl” is shows up in videos on “messy French girl makeup” (self-explanatory) and “girl mess pile tours” (virtual tours of girl’s piles of stuff). Whatever mess you make, there is a viral-ish video on TikTok championing it. In this vernacular, mess is a positive thing, rooted in the Y2K era “indie sleaze” style trend and dovetailing with “cluttercore,” another trend celebrating mismatched collections of objects.
But these messes are not really as effortless as they seem. What are we actually talking about when we talk about “mess”? ELLE Decor decided to investigate.
What Is The Messy Girl Aesthetic?
Hot on the heels of the “intentional clutter” boom, the “messy girl” trend is the very online answer to “organized chaos,” with a feminine bent. It involves keeping things proudly on display instead of stashing them away, letting your personality shine through unexpected details like collections, books, and layers of visually arresting objet and decor.
By comparing a girl’s messy room to a Sofia Coppola film, creators are staking a claim to anti-neatness as a rallying cry—a way of expressing individuality and taste. (Presumably they have Coppola’s 1999 adaptation of The Virgin Suicides in mind, though stills from Marie Antoinette also make the rounds.) But, like in those films, these chaotic rooms and vignettes are actually quite curated—the mess somehow coalesces into a style. It’s actually quite effortful to look effortless.
Take as a counterpoint the popular Instagram Reels series Boy Room, which documents spaces that could most politely be described as disastrous. The idea is that a girl’s mess is “aesthetic,” while a boy’s mess is—well, click through the above link.
A room designed by Bunny Williams.
Messy Is A Matter Of Taste
Messy is less a stance on design and more a matter of taste. The Olsen twins are oft-cited as nonchalant style icons for the way they were captured in the early aughts sauntering around Manhattan with their handbags gaping open, on the way from a black SUV into one rarefied venue or another. Messy isn’t just an aesthetic choice, it’s a set of values.
In translating the look from fashion and pop culture to the home, creators often embrace ephemera—whether that’s a smattering of beauty products or brushes laying around, or a stack of polaroids from a birthday party taped to a wall—and decorate with vintage furnishings, layered textiles, and anything that could be described as an heirloom. This isn’t your average mess, but instead a curated collection, designed to look haphazardly thrown together.
The home of Christopher Garis and Nicolo Baldissera.
Which brings us to another point: Messy isn’t cheap. It is, in and of itself, a position of privilege that comes with attendant social markers—who is it that can afford to be messy, and who is it that will accept them for it? The Olsen twins are on a million moodboards partly because viewers know someone else will be along to clean up after them.
What Does Messy Mean In The Context Of Interior Design?
The idea that, in showing off our clutter, we’re showing off some deeper side of ourselves is a wishlist fallacy. In reality, we’re often simply exposing our shopping habits. Sharing your “girl mess pile” is the natural antecedent to a “fit check,” showing off how the proverbial sausage is made.
The home of fashion designer Agnes B.
There is something safe in this conceptualization of mess. It’s the performance of an interior world—stage dressing—rather than mess itself. What this trend speaks to is less the way a great room evidences the idiosyncrasies of its occupants, and more about stuff as a proxy for personality. And that, ironically enough, is what’s most messy about it.
Sean Santiago is ELLE Decor’s Deputy Editor, covering news, trends and talents in interior design, hospitality and travel, culture, and luxury shopping. Since starting his career at an interior design firm in 2011, he has gone on to cover the industry for Vogue, Architectural Digest, Sight Unseen, PIN-UP and Domino. He is the author of The Lonny Home (Weldon Owens, 2018), has produced scripted social content for brands including West Elm and Streeteasy, and is sometimes recognized on the street for his Instagram Reels series, #DanceToDecor
