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Megan Lorenz
Everything in Tania Beasley-Jolly’s living room was built around her two yellow chairs—a find from The Future Antiques—and informed by her time abroad. “I became very enchanted with these old black-and-white mansions in Singapore, so when I moved back, everything sort of merged,” she says. “I’m inspired by everywhere I’ve lived. That room really is an amalgam of that.”
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Megan Lorenz
Coats are an obsession that Beasley-Jolly traces back to her days in Belgium. “If you had a beautiful topper, a gorgeous boot, and a fabulous handbag, it really didn’t matter what you had on underneath,” she explains. This coat, by Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, is one of her favorites. “I saw that a winter ago in Bergdorf’s and said, ‘This is the most magical thing I’ve ever seen,’” she says.
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Megan Lorenz
“You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the books in their house,” she says. It’s no wonder, then, that her coffee table is stacked high with art history and fashion books. “They become part of the décor.”
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Megan Lorenz
“I have a thing for feathers,” Beasley-Jolly says of these Brian Atwood heels. “I should wear them more,” she admits, “but they are so pretty!”
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Megan Lorenz
Though classically trained in opera, Beasley-Jolly finds inspiration in all genres and styles—and in mixing and matching them. “I love the juxtaposition of this bag under a print of rapper and hip-hop icon Biggie Smalls,” she says. “Hip-hop influences fashion, especially today, and I’d like to think he’d probably have carried this fabulous bag, too.”
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Megan Lorenz
“I love big costume jewelry,” says Beasley-Jolly. These shell necklaces were purchased from a street vendor in Bali, where she was visiting a friend. “[My friend] had them all over, and I fell in love with them,” she says.
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Megan Lorenz
Of all the items in her wardrobe, dresses—the architecture, the bows, the character—rank high. “I have an absolute addiction [to] and problem with dresses,” Beasley-Jolly says. “I cannot get enough.”
As in a museum, nearly everything in Tania Beasley-Jolly’s Tower Grove house is thoughtfully curated. More than beautiful, her collection is deliberate. Beasley-Jolly, who describes her style as “Jackie O in biker boots,” boasts an eclectic assortment of clothing, furnishings, and accessories that has an air both classic and contemporary, both elegant and flamboyant, offering a glimpse into her life, travels, and passions.
“I’m a little bit of a magpie in that I do like to collect things, but everything is intentional,” Beasley-Jolly says. “[These items] make me happy. They make me smile. They make me remember certain points in my life. That’s why I like to surround myself with these things; it’s not just because they’re pretty.”
Her style and intentionality have helped establish Beasley-Jolly as a fashion authority on the local, national, and international levels. She’s worked as marketing director for Saks Fifth Avenue here, co-founded the Saint Louis Fashion Fund to help aspiring designers, and provided creative strategy consulting for brands in the fashion, retail, and design industries. Most recently, she launched MERCH, an experiential retail concept, with partner Susan Sherman; in this role, she says, she curates items from global fashion and beauty brands to “surprise and delight the St. Louis consumer.”
Megan Lorenz
A self-described historicist and royalist, Beasley-Jolly has an affinity for headbands. “That has historical significance for me; it’s not just pretty,” she says. “It’s like a mini crown or tiara.”
In a sense, she’s found herself back where she began.
“I started my career thinking I wanted to be a curator,” says Beasley-Jolly, who was born and raised in St. Louis. After earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history, she went on to work at both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. “For me, fashion and clothes are almost like art,” she notes. “There is a really fine line. It’s socio-, it’s political, it’s artistic.”
It wasn’t until she moved with her husband to Antwerp, Belgium, however, that her interest in fashion and her own sense of style truly began to take shape. “That was a turning point for me, because Antwerp is a huge fashion city,” Beasley-Jolly says. “I’ve always had a flair for who I was and how I wanted the world to perceive me, but I think it crystalized there.”
Inspired by Belgian women’s “sense of self,” she fell in love with the muted palette and architectural but streamlined style they prefer, noting how different it is from the American aesthetic. “Americans tend to go on quantity. Europeans tend to drive on quality,” she says. “I learned then that you just have to buy the best that you can buy, and you don’t need a ton of it.”
From Belgium back to the U.S., to Singapore and back to St. Louis and her Tower Grove home, Beasley-Jolly has continued to be inspired by her experiences and the brands she consults. Through it all, she has cultivated her own sense of fashion: flashy but sophisticated.
“I truly realize I was a man in a past life. I’m very artistic and architectural,” she says. “For me, it’s always about the neck or the sleeve. There’s gotta be a bow, a ruffle, or a big poufy sleeve. It’s very 1700s—what men wore, not women. There is a certain androgyny. I like to be very feminine up top but then wear, like, a clunky boot on my feet.”
