Growing up in Mississippi - and a stone's throw from New Orleans - I was lucky enough to be surrounded by great examples of Southern vernacular architecture from a young age. The grandeur of the 1850s Greek revival house up the highway; the gingerbread charm of the Victorians that lined the creek in our hometown; an old dog-trot that my friend's mother renovated as a summer place; a shotgun house used as a hunting lodge. 

What I loved most about those houses then -and still love today - was that after hundreds of years standing, they never seemed to go out of style. Their clean lines and good bones - even the most primitive - could accommodate an eclectic mix of tattered Persian rugs and comfortable slip-covered sofas next to a Wassily chair and a primitive painted wood coffee table. Doors were always flung open to a screened porch lit by lamps and furnished like any other room. These houses and their interiors called for a nod to the past and a view towards the future - without giving up comfort or personality. And that, to me, is the hallmark of great southern style. Patina, personality, eclecticism and ease. Below, I've taken a stab at unpacking a few of the ways that southern houses achieve these core virtues. 

Bold Moves: whether you work with a decorator or choose the DIY route, it's easy to second-guess yourself when it comes to decorating a room. My favorite Southern houses always seem to be inhabited by people who push through self-doubt, making brave, bold moves that put their personal stamp on a space. In one friend's house, repainting a set of safely-white kitchen cabinets in Farrow & Ball's electric green Arsenic transformed that room into a reflection of her personality - and a place everyone loves to gather. Some other favorite Southern friends furnished their dining room by placing a marble slab cut into a 60-inch round on top of a portion of a massive fluted wooden column that once belonged to an 1850s Greek Revival House. Surrounded by 6 steel and leather chairs by Mies van der Rohe, this table was the site of many delightful meals that carried on late into the evening. Both of these sets of friends went with their instincts and steered away from safe choices to create spaces characterized by originality and spunk.

Photo by Caroline Allison

Layering: Of course, there's nothing particularly regional about a house that is beautifully layered; you have only to look at the World of Interiors to recognize that the Brits have us beat in every way in that particular arena. Still, all the Southern houses I love the most seem to have been assembled over years, and their owners tend towards maximalism over the alternative. It takes some patience and living to assemble a layered room. Bookshelves brim with books that have actually been read and are punctuated with souvenirs of travel and foraging. I was having dinner with one friend recently whose dining room chandelier is draped in colorful bunting, hung with small mirrored baubles, and woven through with dried vines in which real birds' nests rest. It sounds like some fever dream (or a big decorating fail) but it was perfectly beautiful, especially because it features some new addition each time I visit.

Photo by William Waldron

Comfortable, Welcoming Formal Rooms: In so many houses these days, the real living gets done in the kitchen or the family room, and large living rooms and dining rooms hardly get used except at holidays. Of course, this is part of a larger trend towards more casual living, but I sometimes find that the separation between the informal and formal spaces of a house feel too stark. I love houses that make use of every square foot of space available, and where the formal living room is comfortable and welcoming enough to do double duty as the space where a family gathers and entertains. One of my favorite houses (this one in Washington, DC) belonged to a distant cousin who had a natural sense of chic I wish I'd had more time to study (she died many years ago). The house was a grand old Victorian with a long, wide entry flanked by double parlors. The kitchen, breakfast room and study were all in the back of the house. Rather than relegating life to those hidden rooms and allowing the front spaces to atrophy, my Mississippi cousin lined them both with bookshelves, painted one room yellow, the other a sort of reddish orange, and put a long farm table right down the middle of the entry hall that she wallpapered with one of of William Morris' more large-scale prints. To this day, I remember the warmth and comfort of that table, lit by candlelight and overflowing with laughter.

Photo by Lesley Unruh

Any student of Southern design can't help but run across photographs of the many houses that Julia Reed designed. Whether in her Creole house in the French Quarter, her grand Greek Revival in the Garden District, or later, in her Mississippi Delta Folly, Julia captured the essence of Southern chic.