How To Decorate Your Home Like Holly Golightly In Breakfast At Tiffany's

The movie begins as Holly hops out in her classic black dress and pearl necklace, with her breakfast in hand, munching and sipping as she window shops at Tiffany's storefront. Ms. Golightly is presented to the viewers as a put-together princess, a vision of style and eternal elegance. Three scenes later, Holly is awoken by her new neighbor, Paul Vajark, who seeks permission to use her phone. It's then that we first get a peek into her eclectic home decor. Holly lets Paul in and she struggles for some seconds to find the phone only to recall that she placed it in a suitcase.  "I stuck it in the suitcase.. Kind of muffles the sound," Ms. Golightly says. In order to decorate your home like Holly Golightly, you first need to procure a cordless phone. This will add an antique vintage aesthetic to your space. New York-based designer, Jim Walrod, firmly believes in decorating your space with a vintage phone or three! Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, he encourages everyone to scatter them around to boost the home decor, saying, "A vintage phone gives a sense of grandeur to any interior—not just certain periods of décor,...The phones anchor a room and suggest permanence. They're the opposite of kitsch." 

If you have no clue where to find Holly's vintage version, Etsy has a good selection that you can explore. Holly's phone is black which can work within any color scheme but you can also feel free to choose any other color depending on what hue works best for your current palette. Alternatively, you could find an antique phone and if the color is not something you're keen on, you can easily revamp the phone just like Becky Treager Art did, using paint. Feel free to place it on a shelf like Becky placed her revamped rotary phone on a shelf, or you could also channel your inner Holly Golightly and find a vintage suitcase to hold the phone.

If you are still on the fence about inserting one into your home, one thing you can guarantee is that vintage rotary dial phones offer a good backup, should emergencies occur. When speaking to Concord Monitor, rotary phone owner, Bill Lounsbury, claims to have kept one in his woodshed for this specific reason. He says, "We keep it going because if we have a power outage we can call on it. It's a useful tool if we have a power outage when you can't charge up cellphones," 

 "Well this is .... A nice little place you got here, " says Paul as he steps into Holly's space. One item that surely warranted that statement is the zebra print rug placed smack in the middle of a living room. Holly is a party girl; she either goes out all night or brings the party scene to her home, hosting wild raves with New York City's elite. Every good hostess needs a lively space for guests to dance and jive and gravitate towards. This could be the reason why the main floor area which serves as the dance floor during her house parties is left bare with only an eye-catching zebra print rug. This is such a bold and fearless choice to make, as the black and white hue offers a bold, fun look to the room's aesthetic. If you do not want the real deal of a Zebra rug, go for a similarly colored patterned rug much like this geometric patterned black and cream "Abby" rug from Joybird. The low pile texture ensures that it is low maintenance and could be used both indoors and outdoors. 

Alternatively, instead of purchasing your animal print rug, you could just make one for yourself at home, using faux suede material with felt backing to give off the felted rug effect. This is exactly what Heather of The Decor Fix did for a client, except the stripes she added to the rug were gold, not black like Holly's. The trick to making the rug look like hide is to fold the fabric in half and cut both edges of the rug at the same time so that it is equal on both sides. After you've done this, use an ink pen to draw stripes onto the suede similar to the zebra stripes seen on Holly's rug, then outline and fill in all the stripes using acrylic paint and two brushes.

Holly's personality comes across as free-spirited with an energy that moves as fast as the wind. This could be the reason why she owns a wooden wind vane with a fish statue at the top, which she placed right next to her apartment door. The gold and red wind vane or weathervane, as some may like to call it, is yet another decor piece in her space that stands up in a great way. In modern times, with the rise of the internet and other weather forecast gadgets, weathervanes have slowly phased out. Nevertheless, if you wish to decorate like Holly Golightly from "Breakfast At Tiffany's," entertain the thought of inserting one into your living space. First, take a look at your current decor and map out spaces that can benefit from a bit of a zhuzhing up. Feel free to add a floor-standing version like Holly's in your home as a focal point against the wall of your entryway. This will help showcase your character right away once visitors step inside. 

If you have a garden, you can also use a free-standing weathervane to beautify your garden. According to Thrifty, the first step is to decide if you want to display the weathervane solely for its beauty or if you want one that is functional and decorative at the same time. If you are doing the former then aim to install it at a level that makes it visible to whoever enters the garden so they can enjoy its beauty effectively. If you need your weathervane to read the wind, place it about 6 to 7 feet above the ground. Keep in mind that the further away your vane is from buildings and trees, the more effective it will be when reading the wind as there will be fewer objects mitigating an accurate read of the wind. 

It goes without saying that cupolas are also a classic roof accent upon which you can place your wind vane as well. You can seek the help of a professional to mount it on your cupola or on the ridge of your roof. You can also mount it by yourself, per Do It Yourself. Gather your tools together and drill a hole, but keep in mind that installations vary according to the type of vanes you have; whether it's a copper weathervane or a cast iron version.

You would recall that Ms. Golightly has a vintage suitcase in which she keeps her rotary telephone. But this is not the only place where suitcases have been sighted in her apartment. Suitcases have been spread around many corners of her abode for various functions.  Shiplap and Shells maintains that the use of suitcases as decor in your home gives off a fall aesthetic, so as the leaves begin to fall this season, this may be the perfect time to imitate Ms. Golightly and add a few inside your home.

Pictured in this scene above, Holly has stacked the suitcases by her entryway to use them as an entryway table. When choosing the suitcases which you aim to stack, consider a few things. If you want to arrange them vignette style, then you can get different shapes that are not necessarily identical in form but have different ascending sizes. But if you aim to use it for an end table, then you must be particular about the appearance of the table hence feel free to buy a few extra items such as paint, table legs, screws, and drills which you can use to transform your suitcase into a proper DIY furniture version, per Home Talk.

This Wald Imports version from Amazon looks super close to the version Holly used to hide her telephone. Keep in mind that, depending on which suitcase you find, whether it's outdated and dull in color, or it comes in a color that does not match your current aesthetic, you can always paint the suitcase to suit your needs, no pun intended! Find various areas to display your cases, apart from the hallway as a makeshift entryway table, display them in your bedroom, the kids' nursery and so many other areas, per Stuff.