Stylize Your Life

Angst-filled Harvard seniors may not list home decorating among their hierarchies of worry. Nevertheless, Yee-Fan Sun ’96 advises those on the verge of graduation to think seriously about this issue and offers creative aesthetic advice for this age group on DigsMagazine.com. Though a VES concentrator, Sun's art classes were not the impetus for beginning this venture. “It was more what I didn’t learn at Harvard—I had this advanced degree and an apartment full of boxes. I was uncertain how to fit everything together,” she says.

After that experience, Sun began the colorful website DigsMagazine.com as a “home and living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation.” The site breaks into four categories: lounge, nourish, host and laze. “I thought that these were the four essential building blocks of a happy home space, and that most design magazines only focused on presentation,” Sun says.

Generally, Sun recommends thrift store treasures and color as possible means of making small or cheap spaces more unique and pleasant. But what of the aesthetically “aged” undergrad who wants a chandelier and a polar bear rug? For those such as Stephanie J. Sverdrup Stone ’06, who “sees a lot of Louis XVI in [her] future,” Sun suggests estate sales as a way to explore the Harvard Club aesthetic while on a tight budget.

Despite her current love for entertaining, Sun explains that she threw few parties while at Harvard, describing the typical dorm room as “not conducive” for the intimate parties she now advocates. Current undergraduates such as Maria A. May ’06 concur, citing the “dimly lit rooms” that most campus parties occur in as an obstacle to real socializing.

Elizabeth J. Heymann ’06 is an experienced hostess, having facilitated a number of dinner parties at home in Madison, Wis. She finds that the most pressing challenge of college parties is “not having enough booze.” Although many undergraduates look forward to a post-college golden era of creative and chic cocktail events, the current Harvard scene may suggest that sophistication is still a ways off.

Sun concurs that living space makes a big difference in entertaining. “The main change after Harvard is that opposed to dorms, students will be living in apartments and will have kitchens, making dinner parties more likely,” she says. Once adulthood encroaches, the days when an entire group of friends lives in a 20-minute radius will be but a fond memory. Sun explains that “after college your friends will be more spread out, forcing more planning and organization for parties.” Sun wishes that she had enjoyed more theme parties while at college, agreeing and appreciating that “people lose their inhibitions when dressed in costume.”