Latest / Style Project: Fashion, beauty & personal style / Hidden Rooftop Gardens: Finding Peace in Urban Skyline Oases | Style Project
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that only exists thirty feet above the street, where the sirens become a hum and the sky feels close enough to touch. You might be walking past one right now without even knowing it’s there. Let’s be real for a second. We spend so much of our lives looking down. At our phones, at our shoes, at the cracks in the pavement that remind us we’re moving too fast. We are trained to navigate the city by avoiding obstacles, by keeping our heads down and our chins up, by surviving the commute rather than inhabiting it. But today, I want to invite you to look up. Not in a frantic way, but with a sense of discovery. Because hidden among the concrete canyons of our cities are these quiet, green sanctuaries. Rooftop gardens. They aren’t just architectural features or status symbols for penthouse dwellers. They are breathing spaces. They are the lungs of the building, yes, but they are also the lungs for us. For years, I walked past the back entrance of my old office building, the one with the heavy steel door and the keypad that never seemed to work for visitors. I assumed it led to a mechanical room filled with humming HVAC units and dusty pipes. One rainy Tuesday, desperate to escape a meeting that had gone off the rails, I pressed the intercom button just to see what would happen. The buzzer sounded, the door clicked open, and I stepped out into a world that didn’t belong to the grid below. It was small, maybe two hundred square feet, cluttered with terracotta pots, a wrought-iron bistro set that had seen better decades, and rows of tomato plants struggling toward the gray light. And it was the most peaceful place I had been all week. When I think about this, I can’t help but connect it to how we dress. Remember last week when we talked about the heavy blanket paradox? How softness can actually be your strongest armor against a hard world? This rooftop garden is exactly that same principle, but applied to space instead of fabric. It is a layer of softness placed over the hardness of urban life. When you step onto that roof, the air changes. It smells different. It smells like damp earth, basil, and sun-baked clay. The noise of the traffic doesn’t disappear, but it transforms. It becomes white noise, a backdrop rather than an intruder. And your posture shifts. Your shoulders drop. Your breath deepens. In fashion terms, we talk a lot about 'fit'—how a garment sits on the body, how it allows movement. But I’ve started thinking about emotional fit. How does your environment sit on your spirit? Does it constrict you? Does it make you feel small? Or does it hold you? A hidden rooftop garden holds you. It offers a vantage point that says, you are part of the city, but you are not defined by its chaos. You are separate from it, yet connected to it through the roots of those plants. It’s a reminder that nature isn’t something you travel to find. It’s something you can cultivate, right here, right above your head. I want to tell you about a friend of mine, Sarah. She lives in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with no balcony, no yard, nothing but a window that looks out onto a brick wall. Last year, she got permission from her landlord to use the flat section of the roof next to her stairwell exit. She started small. Just three herbs. Rosemary, thyme, and mint. Every morning, before she left for work, she would climb those four flights of stairs, step out into the cool air, and water them. It took less than five minutes. But those five minutes became her anchor. She told me once that she could feel the stress of the day evaporating as she touched the leaves. The rosemary smelled like pine and memory. The thyme released its scent when she brushed against it, a tiny perfume of resilience. Now, she has a whole patch of strawberries and a few dwarf lemon trees. She doesn’t eat all the fruit, mostly she just enjoys watching them grow. There is a profound joy in tending to something that requires patience. In a world that demands instant gratification, where we swipe and scroll and expect results in seconds, nurturing a plant is an act of rebellion. It forces you to slow down. It asks you to observe. Is the soil dry? Are the leaves drooping? Is the sun hitting them directly? These small questions pull you out of your head and into your hands. And that presence—that full-bodied attention—is what heals us. It’s the same reason why I love editing clothes. It’s not about the final image. It’s about the process of noticing. Noticing the weight of the fabric. The way the light hits the seam. The subtle shift in how you stand when you feel powerful. On that rooftop, you notice everything. The way the wind catches your hair. The color of the clouds shifting behind the skyline. The taste of a strawberry picked moments ago. It is sensory richness in its purest form. I often ask my listeners, 'Does it feel like you?' When we talk about style, we’re asking if the clothes align with your internal truth. When we talk about spaces, we should ask the same question. Does this corner of your life feel like you? For many of us, our apartments are small. Our offices are cubicles. Our commutes are crowded trains. We don’t have control over much of our physical reality. But we can create pockets of agency. You don’t need a rooftop to do this. You can start with a windowsill. You can start with a single succulent on your desk. You can start with opening a window and letting the outside air mix with the inside air. The principle remains the same. Intentionality. We are designing our environments to support our well-being, not just to store our things. Think about the lighting in your room. Is it harsh and fluorescent, mirroring the glare of a computer screen? Or can you add a warm lamp, a candle, a string of fairy lights that mimic stars? Think about the textures around you. Do you have soft throws, smooth stones, rough wood? These elements ground us. They remind our nervous systems that we are safe. A rooftop garden is the ultimate expression of this grounding. It connects you to the cycles of the earth. Spring brings new growth. Summer brings heat and abundance. Autumn brings harvest and decay. Winter brings rest. Even if you live in a high-rise surrounded by glass and steel, you can participate in these cycles. You can plant seeds in spring. You can watch them bloom in summer. You can compost your scraps in autumn. You can let the soil rest in winter. You are not separate from nature because you live in a city. You are nature, living in a different configuration. And giving yourself permission to acknowledge that—to nurture it, to celebrate it, to find beauty in it—is a radical act of self-care. There is also a thrill in discovery. Walking through the city, you never know what secrets are waiting. That hidden rooftop garden is a surprise. It’s a gift from someone else who decided to make their space beautiful, who decided to share a bit of greenery with the wind, if not with people. It reminds us that beauty is often hidden in plain sight. We have to look for it. We have to be curious. As Millie, I’ve spent my career telling women to trust their instincts, to wear what makes them feel alive, to ignore the rules that don’t serve them. This is the same advice for your environment. Don’t accept the sterile, the empty, the generic. Look for the quirks. Look for the plants growing in recycled bottles. Look for the mural painted on the alley wall. Look for the rooftop garden behind the unmarked door. These details matter. They shape your mood. They shape your story. When you carry these discoveries with you, you bring a sense of wonder into your daily interactions. You become a person who notices. Who appreciates. Who finds joy in the unexpected. And that energy is contagious. It rubs off on your colleagues, your friends, your family. You start seeing the potential for beauty everywhere. Maybe it’s in the way the light hits the coffee cup in the morning. Maybe it’s in the pattern of rain on the windowpane. Maybe it’s in the smile of a stranger holding a bouquet of flowers. These moments are the stitches that hold our days together. They are the texture of a life well-lived. So, take a moment today. Step away from the screen. Look up. See if you can find a patch of green, a splash of color, a sign of life that isn’t digital. Let it remind you that you are part of something larger, something growing, something enduring. Wear the pants, literally or metaphorically, but also wear the peace. Find your rooftop. Claim your sky. And remember, you deserve a view that lifts you up. Thank you for letting me into your day. I hope you find a little patch of green somewhere along your route home. Until next time, keep looking up. Love, Millie.