Justina Blakeney on How a Multicultural Childhood Shaped Her Signature Style
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Justina Blakeney is a designer, author, and creator of the beloved blog-turned-brand Jungalow. In her second book, out today, she outlines the origins of her trademark style and shares her secrets to achieving it. In an excerpt from her introduction, below, Blekeney—who is of Black and Jewish heritage, a mix she calls "Blewish"—talks about the importance of mixing, in life and design.
In the wild, plants send pollen grains to ride the water or wind, or develop flowers with the colors, fragrances, or nectars necessary to attract pollinators—all in order to send their genes far afield to mix with one another. All sexually reproducing species go to great lengths to mix their genes as a way to survive shifting environmental conditions. Over time, new species evolve, and the result is the vast array of living organisms we encounter on our planet.
We humans are part of this story, of course, and there is a deep sense that our very existence as individuals and as a species is the result of putting a high value on genetic mixture and diversity. Mixing is magic.
I believe that mixing is just as essential to cultural reproduction, in all its various modes: food, music, art, architecture, design, etc. Like living organisms, cultural practices mix, mutate, and evolve, giving rise to fantastic innovations.
Culinary history, for example, often reveals the surprising hybrid origins of characteristic regional dishes. Banh mi is what you get when French baguettes are put to use by Vietnamese street food vendors. Vindaloo is a Goan variation ofPortuguese marinade called “vinha d’alhos.”
Such hybridization is the rule in music as well. Jazz music, for example, is what emerges when West African rhythmic traditions mix with European tonal music and musicians repurpose wind instruments left over from Civil War marching bands. Musical styles from axé to zydeco are hybrids.
There are examples of hybridization in the fine arts, too. Many modern artists are exemplars of cross-cultural inspiration. Vincent Van Gogh was so inspired byJapanese ukiyo-e paintings and wood block prints that he thought of their influence as fundamental to his practice. Pablo Picasso’s encounter with the sculptures and masks of African artists were pivotal to the creation of his proto-Cubist masterpiece,Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Frida Kahlo, born to a German-Hungarian father and a Spanish-Tehuana mother, was herself of mixed heritage, and is known primarily for her self-portraits that often provoke the viewer by juxtaposing Indigenous andTraditional with Modern and European imagery.
Related: Tour Justina Blakeney's Los Angeles Cottage
This is also true in architecture and design. Famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright found the influence of Japanese woodblock prints to be as foundational to his work as Van Gogh did. “If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education,” he said, “I don’t know what direction the whole might have taken.” Mixing is everywhere. What would Art Deco be without its Ancient Egyptian motifs? What would Santa Fe look like without its mix of Native Adobe andSpanish woodwork? What would Moroccan design be without its unique blend ofBerber, Mediterranean, Arabic, and Sub-Saharan African influences?
Even the language in which I write is an amalgam forged by centuries of mixing and remixing between Germanic and Celtic tribes, imperial Latin, ancientGreek, and Norman French. And because of the English language’s status as a lingua franca of the modern world, it continues to absorb words and concepts and syntax from cultures and languages from all over the globe.
Cross-cultural hybrids emerge from the turbulent churning of history, but whether introduced by slave ships or trade ships, salsa dips or smacking lips, new tools, materials, and practices are inevitably transformed and reinvented to suit the lives and aspirations of people in ever-changing cultural contexts.
And yet, despite Mother Nature’s love of diversity, in 1968 there were social and political obstacles to the union of my parents. They proudly think of themselves as part of the “Loving Generation” in honor of Mildred and Richard Loving, the couple who just the year before had won the case against Virginia that resulted in the Supreme Court overturning state laws against interracial marriage. Still, my parents’ families looked with trepidation on the marriage. Both my grandmothers feared that a mixed marriage would mean a hard life—or afterlife—for the children.Where would they truly belong?
Such fears be damned. My parents found in each other and in each other’s culture something other than themselves that they found meaningful, healing, and fulfilling. Together they would synthesize something new—a vibrant mix of their cultural inheritances within which they raised a family.
Want more intel from Justina? Purchase Jungalow: Decorate Wild now!
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