Hours before Gov. John Bel Edwards issued the first stay-at-home order to help slow the coronavirus’ spread, designer Arianne Bellizaire created a Facebook group called “Inspired to Style (at Home),” riffing off her popular blog and intended to help homeowners solve decorating dilemmas during confinement.
Questions poured in almost immediately. Bellizaire’s first live conversation with group members took place the next afternoon. Just a week later—while the rest of Baton Rouge still struggled with Zoom meetings and remote server access from their kitchen tables and back porches—she posted a video with tips on setting up a sanity-saving home workspace.
‘I launched the group as a way to create a bright spot of hope for our community,” Bellizaire reflects. “I personally felt overwhelmed, anxious and helpless about the havoc the outlook was wreaking on our state, so I offered to let others join me in a space focused on positivity, support, encouragement and, of course, decorating!”
Connecting with others—both face to face and virtually—has been the backbone of the personal brand carved out by Bellizaire ever since she married her communications background and passion for interior design. She began her blog, Inspired to Style, in 2013, offering a peek behind the typically tightly drawn curtain of the interior design world. From the start, her videos and posts offered practical “Design 101” tips as well as updates on trends and behind-the-scenes looks at her own projects.
Over time, the broader design world to notice the appeal her content had. In 2015, she was chosen as a “Style Spotter” for High Point Market, the world’s largest furnishings industry trade show and she was named one of the Top 100 Bloggers and Influencers by DesignHounds, a network of interior design professionals.
Bellizaire brought her social media fans along as she pored over products at markets and traveled to showrooms and manufacturing facilities both stateside and abroad. When she and her husband purchased a house in the Country Club of Louisiana, she wrote every step of the way as she designed the space.
Now, as people are stuck at home, Bellizaire is helping people see their spaces differently, and express themselves through design as the community deals with the coronavirus pandemic.
“My goal for the group was to allow people to post the decorating projects they were working on during this time and get input from other design enthusiasts,” she says. “I’m not the main attraction—the community is, as they uplift and encourage each other while offering suggestions and asking really insightful questions to help each other. I’m so proud of how they are using this resource to help them be productive during this quarantine period!”
Read the Bellizaire’s full story from the latest cover of inRegister magazine, and see photos showing how she transformed her home.
You can read Bellizaire’s blog at www.inspiredtostyle.com, and join the discussion at her new Facebook group here.
