The Year I Really Embraced Ribbon

Naturally, this was too good an idea for it to be mine. But I thought it was original for several, soaring minutes. Ribbons on everything! my little heart screamed in a revelation, during my arduous attempt to decorate for the season without using any seasonal decorations. Ribbons are the solution!

Not the obligatory Christmas red velvet or green felt ribbons, but ribbons in all their variety! Especially because these ribbons should last well into the New Year. Every fabric, every celebratory color. Granny smith grosgrain. Carmine silk. A golden pomelo-colored wired ribbon! Ballerina pink velvet. A burgundy lace!

Ribbons on the evergreen garlands while they last, of course, but also ribbons on the candlesticks. Ribbons on the tree branches while they last, of course, but also ribbons around the backs of chairs. Ribbons on the staircase!

While designing this full festoon in my mind, while tracking down ribbons in chartreuse and deep artichoke and fern for my monochrome vision, I believed I was an inspired decor innovator. It was the same fleeting, delusional confidence I felt once for a wild thirty seconds the morning that I thought I’d invented breakfast sandwiches.

Of course, I’d shored this decorative strategy away in my mind, but I’d been seeing it for weeks. Just in quick flashes, from the pantheon of my favorite aesthetes. On the storied mantle of designers Luke Edward Hall and Duncan Campbell: big, audacious silk bows punctuated a chaotic arrangement of evergreen branches. Artist and designer Julie O’Rourke just wrote about an (unbeknownst to me) Christmas tradition of ribbon rosettes.

Now, if you were to ask me, Maggie, who is the father of a beribboned festive spirit? I would have an answer for you! In my set of references, it’s the fantastic British garden and landscape designer Sean Anthony Pritchard. For years, Pritchard has roped his Christmas trees with ribbons and bows of every sort. Preppy stripes this year! Last year, a pendulous, droopy styling. In 2018, maybe my favorite, a mix of rich silks and classic grosgrains (in my guess). Pritchard’s styling captures what’s most appealing about the ribbon: it looks both nonchalant, spontaneous, and slightly slapdash, but also they’re fussy. They look like an afterthought, but ribbons are proud. Cavalier! They make the tree look like it’s carrying little medals around its neck.

On the tree, of course they’re charming but my favorite part of ribbons is that they’re agnostic enough to remain beyond the 25th. This is much better suited to my lifestyle (my lifestyle being one that scuttles to The Parents for the holidays, but then hosts three too many houseguests for the annual New Year’s Eve ‘‘intimate rave’’). Ribbons seem spirited, without containing the Christmas spirit.

And for being the very definition of "unnecessary", ribbons are an incredibly practical element of seasonal decor. Storage couldn’t be easier: just wind them up. There is literally no way to break them. Though I did go quite spendy with my selections (frayed silk velvet, don’t mind if I do), it’s hard to spend an absurd amount of money. And if I didn’t have my overwhelming vision of monochrome green, I could have used my extensive "free ribbon" collection, saved from gifts I’ve received.

I did find the perfect shade of chartreuse, thanks for asking. I love how they give everything a femme touch. Happy-go-lucky, but also coquettish. I’ve really liked looking around the room, and asking, of a bannister or a lamp or a picture frame: do you need a ribbon? It makes everything look like it’s going to the same party. And I realize I’m about to quote famed decor fiend, Mr. Big Lebowski, when I say: It really ties the room together.

Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

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