Picture the ultimate Instagram-friendly home, and your mind’s eye will probably conjure up a millennial pink colour scheme, rose gold accents and plenty of natural light (all the better for shooting #content, of course), with a smattering of scatter cushions and some slogan prints adorning the walls.
What you’re picturing is probably near-identical to Village Marketing’s New York penthouse, a 2,400 square foot studio space which has been deliberately designed with Instagram shoots in mind. Cleverly designed and furnished by US interiors brand Wayfair, it opens its doors to influencers so that they can create branded #content against an Insta-friendly backdrop.
According to Village, the studio was founded ‘to provide influencers with a canvas for content creation and companies with a space for brand installations.’ The space, meanwhile, is described as ‘a fully furnished SoHo penthouse with all of the elements for a successful lifestyle shoot including a sprawling roof deck overlooking lower Manhattan.’ Among those 'elements,' we managed to notch up 17 classic Instagam interiors tropes (yes, house plants and pale pink feature heavily). How many can you spot?
See inside Village Marketing's influencer-friendly penthouse...
Village penthouse - Grazia
1 of 17#A #Feminist slogan print
Can you really call yourself an influencer if you don't have an empowering slogan print on your gallery wall?
2 of 17A fluffy white rug
So cosy. So Instagram-friendly. So hard to keep clean.
3 of 17A metallic etagere
Extra points for the complementary metallic accents, too.
4 of 17Rounded pink seats
Sketch London vibes, anyone?
5 of 17A marble table top
All the better for that morning coffee snap, no?
6 of 17An artfully faded rug
If you're after a more shabby chic finish
7 of 17A round mirror
We have a theory that no Insta-friendly interiors set up is complete without one of these
8 of 17A minimalist bed frame
Four poster, but make it modern...
9 of 17Millennial pink
SO much millennial pink
10 of 17House plants
No millennial home is complete without them
11 of 17A #breakfastinbed tray
Ready to be filled with croissants and green juices
12 of 17Scatter cushions
Presumably, there's an algorithm somewhere that calculates the perfect scatter cushion set up...
13 of 17Metallic accent wallpaper
On a millennial pink backdrop, of course
14 of 17Wicker furniture
On a very verdant roof terrace
15 of 17A #shelfie-ready bookshelf
With a library that's just colour coordinated enough
16 of 17Pendant lighting
The perfect addition to a sleek, modern kitchen
17 of 17Whitewashed bricks
A simple backdrop for that #OOTD shot
Speaking to the New York Times, Village founder Vickie Segar revealed that she saw a gap in the market after realising that many influencers struggled to find lifestyle spaces that lent themselves towards striking Instagram content (in New York, as in London, many were living in cramped rentals with poor natural light). ‘Spaces like this are gold for them, because then they’re able to have a place that’s a home to shoot lifestyle home moments in,’ she said, adding that ‘most of our influencers are millennials, most of them love this color palette. The gold accents, the blushes, the velvets, the furs.’
What we're looking at, then, is the platonic ideal of an Instagram backdrop. But if Village Marketing's undeniably ingenious idea proves anything (other than the ubiquity of millennial pink), it's that the Instagram dream is anything but authentic: instead, it's something that can be recreated for a couple of hours, in a specially designed space calculated for that purpose. And while the ethics of influencers projecting that dream to their followers are surely a little dubious, it's certainly intriguing to see the curtain lifted on what goes in to creating the classic #spon post...