❝ NOW I GET A HOLIDAY, WHEREVER I GO I MIGHT STAY. ❞
Full Name : Vivienne Bonnet Pronouns : she/her Participant : #308 Age : twenty-nine Occupation : Interior Designer Faceclaim : Antoinette Robertson
There was nothing wrong with Vivienne’s family, in fact, some people would’ve called her lucky. She grew up with two loving parents who were completely supportive and nurturing of her every need, material and otherwise. In a different world, Vivienne could’ve easily been lazy, unmotivated and unambitious – but she was black and her parents were white and she knew from day one that had always been the one thing that just didn’t fit in her life. That was a point of stress from neighbors, random people who gave her and her parents stares from a young age. Everyone had an opinion about it and as a kid Vivienne didn’t understand the complexity of why until she got a bit older. Some would call her ungrateful for even thinking the thought, but when you didn’t look like your parents and more importantly, you hair wasn’t able to be done by her parents – you went for the first four years of your life looking like a mess and having question after question that her lovely white parents could never answer.
It was, finally, the hair salon that Vivienne went to at four years old that filled her life in a way her parents her never could. The women who did her hair and many others were a second family. She appreciated her parents for letting her have this space as well. Having a group of black women who understood her hair helped give her a safe place to be herself where she would get information about the world through people who liked hers, eyes. Her parents were amazing, but they didn’t know how to cherish and help Vivienne understand her blackness because they weren’t black. They taught her about issues, especially housing ones, that her parents tried to shield her from. She knew her parents always had the best intentions, she did, but it didn’t change the impact. As Vivienne grew older and the salon went from a space to another to one of the women coming to her house, doing her hair in the kitchen sink, she realized these women who had given her a second home needed affordable housing as well as more accessible, portable, work stations themselves. A dream was born.
Vivienne wanted to build sustainable, cheap, stylish housing & workspaces for people of color, especially black families and women, who needed it. This was no easy feat, even from a young age when she was playing on the Sims building the insides and outsides of homes & lives, it took effort. It took work. But once Vivienne set her sights on something, she got it. Ambitious was her nature when she wanted it, she did everything in her power to make her dreams a reality. At every school she went to starting in late elementary school, she made sure to work three times as hard as the best student there, she made sure to try to uplift other minorities as she had been uplifted, and she navigated the educational system successfully while black. Single minded in her pursuit, she pushed forward even when the world pushed back. Vivienne took full advantage of anything she was given, and worked for everything she earned – getting acceptance into FIDM. While her end goal was always to make housing projects from scratch, she was extremely drawn to interior design because she felt it was what made a house a home. What made an office space functional. It was her top choice due to it’s location, but also because she felt her design style would be best nurtured by them.
Years of understanding herself and Vivienne knew there would be many more years to come, especially when facing a lot of colorism in college. While she knew the Interior Design world was a very white place, she also knew they seemed to not be ready for a dark skinned black girl to break through the scene – her lighter skinned & white classmates often being better received. Again, she knew she’d have to work three times as hard, ignore her parents comments of ‘C’mon, it’s LA! People aren’t that racist here STILL.’, and remember that her end goal made it worth it. That she was still privileged enough to have the opportunity to do what she did, to study without financial worry, and to just create. The pressure she put on herself was insurmountable and unsustainable for a healthy mindset, but she pushed it away in favor of internships, industry parties and extra credit projects.
In between her sophmore and junior year, Vivienne was diagnosed with GAD. Luckily she was able to get treatment for it. Parts of her felt ashamed for breaking down in the middle of college, when she should’ve been building her resume, building her career – not having anxiety attacks over the work that was supposed to motivate her. Again, it was with the support of both her parents and her second family, now women she called her aunties ( who’s kids called HER auntie ), that she was able to slow down. It wasn’t until Vivienne stopped and learned how to face her weaknesses that she realized she was running from them, using her work as an escape.
Graduating at 25 with a BA in Design, an AA in Interior Design, and a good number of business classes she took with the school under her belt, she immediately went to work on building her own companies social media presence and adding even more to her portfolio as well as having a small job at Disney helping design their new offices as their parks expanded. As her social media following was gaining traction, a few celebrities became fans of her style and hired her to design their homes, offices, everything. It was just the break she needed to put her name on the map as an up and coming interior designer. Vivienne was so excited for the traction she was getting and at 27 was invited to design Erotech’s offices in the East Coast of their new program called The System. It was an interesting idea, but she was happy to move cross country only for a few months as she looked for pieces, traveled and enjoyed her time in New York.
It was the final break that gave her more of a mainstream name in the Interior Design industry, and she could almost see the goal she had been working towards for so long come to life. Especially when Erotech invited her to design the apartments for the West Coast version of The System. The company had the power to truly make change, and they were doing so already with The System – something she was invited into as well and agreed to do out of curiosity. Her love life, while she supposes is important, is not the most important thing in her life – her career is but this at least seemed like a vehicle to help her career. Vivienne has had some serious relationships, though they had never been the center of her life, which seemed to be The System’s focus. While she’s curious to see how it works, how her work looks with people living in it, she’s not sure if even something like The System will be able to change her focuses, goals and aspirations. It’s a means to an end, but also a time to really think about if she even wants love, marriage and everything else that comes with it.
