Your Life Doesn’t Need to Fit in a Mason Jar

Thanks for this entirely new concept Kinfolk

There is a popular magazine titled “Kinfolk” which is available online and on print, it is based out of Portland, Oregon. Kinfolk, is a successful and aesthetically pleasing publication that reaches an audience that is typically against standard magazines. It appeals to a young, hip, smart, authentic and fresh crowd who would normally scoff at being told what to do by a magazine. Kinfolk’s slogan is “Slow Living” and includes photographs, articles and interviews that celebrate the notion of a quiet, artistic and poetic lifestyle. The photographs involved normally focus on subjects such as rustic brunch, women wearing linen, rosemary sprigs in apothecary jars, helmetless babes on one-speed bicycles, whisks and spoons, postmodern haircuts, people spending time outdoors in their best wool... you get the idea. These images are inexplicably beautiful, they’re both inviting and isolating. They create a similar feeling of talking to someone who both you think and they think is too cool for you. The reason behind this could be that this magazine is advertising a lifestyle that doesn’t exist. It represents unobtainable minimalism that is only possible to capture in staged photographs.

"Because people ruin brunch"

"Obviously this is my dinner table"

"Yah, this designer sweater looks kind of canoey"

The magazine ambiguously celebrates food, home, and lifestyle, which is certainly not a new concept for magazines that make you feel bad about your life. However, Kinfolk is aimed at a more "artistic” audience and therefore features homes with vintage yet void of character furniture, blank walls and borderline plastic plants in perfectly clean jars. The people in these magazines are often graphic designers or coffee shop owners, they look impossibly stylish yet explain they put very little effort into their look. The food they suggest is normally squash or asparagus and they make these rather boring vegetables sound like they can offer us the sense of purity we are deeply missing in our lives. Kinfolk magazine comes in hard copy tiny book-shaped publications and goes for about 25 bucks a pop. All that being said, I like Kinfolk, it is a magazine that is excellent at what they do, just like Time Magazine or Cosmopolitan. However, I will be damned if I think this is a realistic or even desirable representation of how people actually live. Life is messy, chaotic, colourful, busy and dazzlingly beautiful. Happy homes have paint stains on the carpet, furniture found at garage sales, plants that are vital in dirty pots (because they are filled with mud dammit), inexpensive hairstyles and messy kitchens insinuating that courageous culinary adventures happen there. Like this...

My friend's studio who makes amazing paintings and always has messy hands

A sincerely happy kid 

Potentially frustrating for parents, still awesome

Kinfolk, along with countless Instagram accounts and various storefronts in hip neighbourhoods are representing attractive snapshots of a concept but not a lifestyle. Life doesn't fit into tiny little boxes and that’s part of what makes it so wonderful. Don’t let anyone capitalize on the “life of an artist” because real artists have dirt under their fingernails, messy studios and relics of their lives scrambled throughout their homes. Your lifestyle shouldn’t be advertised, it’s up to you how it looks and that is the best part of it.